Re: Looking for HQ scans/low price

[Raphael Bustin <rafeb@channel1.com>]

On Mon, 10 Jul 2000, RichD wrote:

> Ron Carlson wrote:
> 
> > Thanks Rafe, Thats very usefull. Although I can make the ' big' files when I
> > don't crop much, I often am only interested in a relatively small portion of
> > the frame. My passion is photographing song birds and I like my subjects to be
> > large in the final print. I've tried bicubic resampling but didn't like the
> > pixilation of the skies that resulted. I'm debating about getting Genuine
> > Fractals.
> > Regards, Ron Carlson
> 
> Hi Ron,
> 
> I posted this the last time GF was discussed to help those like you make a
> decision.  Take a look at these examples to see if it helps you.  I'm not saying
> that a similar affect could not be achieved with sharpening, you might want to
> experiment with that yourself.  I don't have the tiffs of these files but they
> are saved at 97% JPG, so you might be able to get an idea.
> 
> http://members.home.net/richd21/GFsamp.html
> 
> If you zoom in on the 2 samples you can see the difference more easily.
> 
> I hope this helps.


Rich, I had a look at that page.  The apparent sharpening is
clear, at least in your example.  When I experimented with GF
I saw a bit of that, but I also saw some obvious artifacts 
that looked a lot like JPG artifacts.  Try your experiment 
again, maybe, on an image that has both smooth curves and 
straight lines.

On your page, you say "the algorythums used in GF are based on 
(accourding to GF website) geometry found in nature."  This is
(IMHO) hype from Altamira, the makers of GF.

The science and math behind fractals have been known and published
widely for the last 20 years.  They are not *based on* nature 
by any means.  The math here is purely a human, synthetic 
invention.  The square root of minus one does not exist in
nature.

Now it just so happens that many patterns produced by fractal
mathematics tend to *resemble* naturally occuring formations,
both organic and inorganic.  Which is indeed part of the 
fascination behind fractal math.


rafe b.

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