Genuine Fractals 5 :: Education by Design Store

Editorial Review
Do you have a low-quality image that you want to enlarge and not have it look terrible? Genuine Fractals 5, a plug-in for Photoshop, will enlarge your image well over 1000% without losing sharpness or detail. Its patented, fractal based interpolation algorithms work like nothing else and the results speak for themselves. Bicubic Interpolation may be fast but it does not distinguish edges so there is a uniform loss of sharpness and detail across the entire image. Genuine Fractals examines your image for naturally repeating patterns and once it finds them, uses them to increase your image to any size you desire. The result is an enlarged image that maintains the edges and the color values from your original file without introducing any artifacts, blurring or halos around edges.

Control exactly how Genuine Fractals will enlarge your image by adjusting the two key variables in the patented scaling algorithm Add any amount of film grain to give your image additional perceived sharpening

System Requirements Windows - Windows XP SP2 or Vista, Microsoft. Net 2.0 Framework or higher Macintosh - Mac OS X 10.4.8 or later, Universal Binary - Supports PowerPC or Intel processors Photoshop CS2 (v9.0.2), CS3, or Photoshop Elements 4 or later 512MB of RAM 25MB of disk space Adobe Flash Player 9 Internet Connection for update checking & tutorial movies
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Customer Reviews

Works really well

2007-12-29
It works really well. it's simple interface is a great. I don't use any of the fine point adjustments, I should but haven't learned about them. but just using it in it's simplest form is much easier than doing the 10% incremental increases suggested for doing enlargement via photoshop.

Makes great photos better

2007-12-28
This product does exaclty as promised; it increases the resolution of photos that are gping to be enlarged. A miracle.

Disappointed with Genuine Fractals 5

2007-10-29
I had read that Genuine Fractals (GF) was the industry standard for enlarging digital photos. In my hands it has been a disappointment. I run a Photoshop CS2 update of CS using Windows XP Pro. When I installed GF5 from the CD, only the Express part of the plugin worked. I could resize but not use any of the image improvement functions. Customer Service provided me a link to download another version but this one insisted on plugging itself into Photoshop CS instead of CS2. So I have to edit in CS2, save the image, open it in CS and resize. Pretty clunky.
Also, when I tested GF5 on a small image (1 x 1.5 inches, 300ppi) and enlarged it to 8.5 x 11 inches, 300ppi, using either Photoshop CS2 or Genuine Fractals Express, naive observers had to look at both images for a while before uniformly picking the GF5 enlargement as the better. I had hoped for a night and day difference but didn't get it.

Works well

2007-10-28
I've used this product a lot... it normally works quite well, sometimes if the original file is too small (like under 50k), it doesn't work so well. But I use it almost daily and I'm happy with the product. It's no miracle software but it essentially does what it promises, in most cases.

It works, slightly better than Photoshop for typical enlargements

2008-06-13
GF does what it's supposed to do , it installs quickly and is fairly intuitive in its interface. It doesn't improve on the original; it merely enlarges the weaknesses.

A product that has lost its niche

2008-04-21
Working with Photoshop Elements 6 on an iMac, I found Genuine Fractals to yield enlargements that were no better than Photoshop's built-in bicubic sampling. Genuine Fractals is, however, slower, buggier, and more crash-prone than what already comes with Photoshop. There may be a place for it, but I couldn't find it.

Very Disappointed

2008-04-03
I ordered this product to use with my photoshop CS3. When I tried to load it a pop up window told me I had to download a microsoft .net frameworks 2.0, which I did. The program loaded, but now another pop up window tells me I might have to get other packages to make this program work. I can't even get the program to open even though it is in the menu at the top of my CS3 program. This is stupid to have to go through this hassle to use a program that is actually only an add on to a program I already have! I feel that I wasted my money and I doubt that I will ever buy a product like this again. My excitement at receiveing this program has definately been squashed! Signed sorry I bought it.....

Genuine Fractals Saved my bacon

2008-02-29
Genuine fractals 5 does all it says it will ... and more. I'm a commercial artist. One of my clients needed some huge (and I mean huge) images for a trade show. Photoshop, as good as it is, couldn't give me the image quality I needed for these extreme enlargements: Genuine Fractals could, and did, without even breaking a sweat.

They have a demo, so give it a try.

As I said, when the chips were down, it saved my bacon.

It works

2008-01-27
I recently enlarged a photo taken with a 6 megapixel HP photosmart camera to a size of 13x19 in. After a little smoothing in photoshop and using Genuine Fractals for the enlargement, I got a great looking picture.