Original Crop
© Michael J. McNamara |
Image enlarged 350% using
Photoshop's bicubic interpolation |
Image enlarged 350% using
Genuine Fractals 3.0 |
It’s almost axiomatic in digital imaging that you can shrink an image as small as you like—but you can’t make it much bigger without losing image quality. If you’ve ever tried upsizing an image and came out with something muddy and fuzzy, then you know what I mean.
Most imaging programs (such as Adobe Photoshop) enlarge pictures by interpolation, a fancy term for faking it. Interpolation increases resolution by inventing and adding new pixels based on the average of those around them. The problem is that it’s incapable of adding new detail—and can fuzz up whatever detail is already there. LizardTech’s plug-in, Genuine Fractals 3.0, fakes it in a different way: It converts the image into a sort of detail map independent of the pixels. Only after this image map is sized up does Genuine Fractals put the pixels back in. In theory, this maintains crisp detail, even in major enlargements.
Don’t get too excited yet. You still can’t make posters of the little pictures you’ve been snapping on your cell phone. While powerful, this program can’t make Britney Spears grow up to be Maria Callas. What it can do is make Maria Callas sound really, really loud. In other words, you can take an already great-looking image of decent resolution and enlarge it almost without limit (based on the version of the software you buy).
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