Genuine Fractals - Holy Grail or Fractal Fakery?

What is it?

Genuine Fractals is a Photoshop plug-in produced by Altamira. In its most basic form it is an alternative compressed file format to the more commonly used JPEG format, but it has other features which are quite interesting.

Once installed the Genuine Fractals file formats .STN (Sting) and .FIF (Fractal Image Format) appear in Photoshop's file selector along with the more familiar file formats. When you attempt to save a file in the STN format (the cheaper version of the plug-in can read but not write FIF files), you are offered a choice of two compression ratios. Lossless can apparently reproduce the uncompressed image exactly once saved and reloaded, whilst Visually Lossless saves a smaller file, which whilst not identical to the original, is supposedly indistinguishable from the original by eye.

Altamira claim that the Lossless compression gives a compression ratio ranging from 2:1 to 4:1 depending on picture content. In practice I found that an image from my Olympus 2500 produced a file of about 2.5 Megs, a compression ratio of around 3:1. The Visually Lossless compression produced a file of about 1 Megabyte in size from the same image, approximately equivalent to a 'best' quality JPEG in terms of both quality and file size.

Nothing amazing in terms of compression then, but unlike other file formats which record the value of individual pixels, Genuine Fractals apparently uses fractal compression which saves mathematical data about the subject of the picture.
 

Fractal Compression?

I have to say at this point that fractal compression is highly mathematical and quite beyond my ability to fully understand, let alone explain. From what I can understand though, it relies on the principal of self-similarity, that is if a part of the image looks similar on a small scale to what it does on a larger scale then there is no need to record the minute detail, only the overall shape. For example, if part of the image is a red triangle, then each corner of the triangle will be the same shape as the triangle as a whole, so the precise detail of each corner is not essential. To demonstrate what I mean, the smooth triangle on the right below, was created from the rough triangle on the left by replacing each pixel in the shape with a smaller copy of itself, then repeating the process.
 
This triangle becomes this, which in turn becomes this triangle

The claimed advantage of fractal compression is that the information in the compressed file is independent of scale, that is, the image can, theoretically, be reproduced at any size without any loss of detail. This is similar to the vector file format used in Corel Draw and other graphics programs,

Does it work?

So much for theory, but what about in practice? When you use Genuine Fractals to load an image file you can select any image size or resolution you want (subject to which version of the plug-in which you have purchased) and the image is then rendered to the appropriate size. As this can be a lengthy process, Genuine Fractals gives you a choice of rendering qualities, although for the purposes of this review I have only used the 'best' option. Rendering an image from my Olympus to a 10" x 8" image at 360 d.p.i. takes about 30 minutes on my Pentium 166, although it would almost certainly be much faster on a machine with more memory, as well as a faster processor. The results are interesting.

Unfortunately the differences are difficult to see on a P.C. as the resolution is insufficient to give the overall impression, but the printed images do look good. The main difference is that enlarging an image with this software, is far more like enlarging a conventional photograph, as there is no trace of the original pixel structure. Photographs just seem to get larger, with none of the softening effect which normally occurs when using conventional interpolation. Diagonal lines seem to stay sharp, and circles are consistently sharp around their circumference.

What Genuine Fractals does not do however is improve shots which are not sharp, as some of my more disappointing efforts show. Also it does not like images which have already been artificially sharpened, as the over-corrected edges become all the more prominent.
 

Conclusion

Unlike some other reviewers, I believe this software does live up to its promises - but at what price? My biggest criticisms of this software have to be its slow speed and its high cost. It may be that nothing can be done about the speed problem, but whilst I may be willing to wait 30 minutes for an image to render, it would be a major problem in a busy graphics department.

The other point is price. I purchased the LE version which is apparently also bundled with some Nikon equipment. This was priced at $50 U.S. which is about £30 sterling, but as it is only available as a CD, rather than as a download, the total cost with FedEx delivery and import duty was over £50 sterling*. The LE version limits the user to an image size of 10 megs uncompressed, which I initially thought would be sufficient for my needs until I discovered that it was too small a limit for some of my panoramas. The next version up is currently $159 or approx. £100, but at least is available as a download. Finally the 'Professional Version' is some $299!

Come on guys! - a plug-in almost as expensive as Photoshop itself needs to be pretty special and GF isn't either that amazing or that essential. If you really want this software to be taken seriously, then you need to turn the Sting format into a standard. Dare I suggest that you offer a totally free version which could be bundled with image editing software, but which is restricted to rendering to say, twice the original size. Once you get people using the format on a regular basis, then you might tempt them into paying out for a better version.

Also, because STG is not a standard format, it does not work with any cataloguing programs, not even the Browse facility in Paint Shop Pro which happily supports the plug-in for saving and loading. This is a pity as the format obviously includes a thumbnail version of the image. Why not offer the necessary routines free to Adobe, JASC and other software houses to include in their software, that way the format could take off? And finally, get the format built into firmware for a digital camera, where the freedom from size restrictions would be ideal.

*I note since writing this that downloads are now available. Still no reduction in price, or any answer to my other comments, though.

Genuine Fractals versus Interpolation

Altamira Group Web Site

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