As my regular review-readers know, I only review software that I actually use and enjoy. Since these reviews inevitably send a lot of traffic to the product being reviewed, I always ask for a discount code to pass along to my readers. The people at the company have given me an OnOne Coupon Code “STUCKINCUSTOMS” to save you 20% on all their products, including Genuine Fractals. You can order the product directly from OnOne Software here.
Also, I have a full review of the OnOne Plugin suite here on the site – you’ll love it!
Genuine Fractals is a great product that allows you to dramatically increase the size of your image. This comes in handy for all sorts of situations, including detail enhancement, printing big prints, post-processing, and advanced cropping.
You know those crime shows on TV when they have a small image from a security camera, and then they magically zoom in and you can see them perfectly? I always thought that was fake until I used this product! Okay, well, that Hollywood BS is still kinda fake… but, essentially, that is what this software does.
I use Genuine Fractals a lot to make a photo dramatically bigger without significant loss to detail and edges. My background is in Computer Science and Math, and, frankly, I have no idea how they made such an amazing algorithm to do this! On their site, they claim to be able to enlarge a photo to 1000% with no loss in detail. I can’t say I entirely believe that, but it is very very close to that!
Here is another bit of information that may seal the deal for you. This is the same software that is used by the major print companies to make giant prints for art, ad campaigns, and the like. Now, for people like you and I that don’t normally have to make GIANT prints, this is not an issue. However, I often make large prints from a section of a cropped photo, and I want it to be big and sharp.
That last point should be expounded upon. Even though cameras are getting more and more megapixels, there is often a situation where you may crop down the original photo quite a bit. Genuine Fractals will allow you to increase the size of that photo once again to make it nice and big.
For years, I have used the image stretching inside of Photoshop. But Genuine Fractals is waaaaay better. Trust me.
When you start up Genuine Franctals inside Photoshop, you get a special dialog. The dialog is very easy to use, and you can do all the cropping, sharpness adjustment, and many other things right inside that dialog. It’s very smart.
The original image at the original size of 3523×5027, as shot with a Nikon D3X.
The cool Genuine Fractals interface. This is before I have typed in the new dimensions, which I doubled.
The stump at 100% before using Genuine Fractals.
The stump at 100% AFTER using Geniune Fractals.
An example of how you can re-crop an image in an interesting way and still have a giant image 5700 pixels across!
Here is the original, shot at 6048×4032 with a Nikon D3X
And here is the same photo full screen. We will zoom in on some of those stickers.
Here is the Sweet Leaf sticker at 100% BEFORE Geniune Fractals
And here it is AFTER Genuine Fractals.
Here is some very strange secret code sticker on the door at 100% before Genuine Fractals
And here it is after the doubling inside Geniune Fractals
Here is another zoomed-in detail that is very nice after Geniune Fractals… go back to the original pic and see how small this was!
July 16th, 2009 18:25 | Samantha
Thanks for this review Trey! I have read good things about this software. Although I don’t need to have any resizing done to my images, I’ve been wondering if Genuine Fractals can be used to improve the quality of the images at their current size? If I have an image that has a lot of noise, it seems to me if I were to run it through this software at no quality loss and then resize it the noise would be reduced. Is this faulty logic?
July 16th, 2009 19:23 | Richard Uchytil
I have used this many times and LOVE it! I often get people from work bringing me very low res small images they want printed large. There’s just no way to do it without this program. This has saved my butt MANY times and made me look like a hero.
Plus they are based here in Portland, Oregon. WOOHOO!!!
July 17th, 2009 08:38 | Anna Yanev
I am using this software often and I love it and I completely agree with you. It is awesome and does wonders. I am also using the PhotoFrame 4. It creates interesting edge effect and textures to photos. Check it out some time and maybe write a review.
July 18th, 2009 00:43 | A New Review for Genuine Fractals
[...] put together a Genuine Fractals Review. This is a great tool for increasing the size of a photo without losing many details. I’m [...]
July 18th, 2009 00:54 | Stuck In Customs
Thanks all
Samantha – I never thought of that. It does have a smart “Sharpening” feature, that you could probably use. You might have to re-size the image and make it a tiny bigger in order for the sharpening to kick in.
July 18th, 2009 09:09 | Suzi
Thanks so much for this review, Trey! I’ve been curious about Genuine Fractals for some time, wondering if the hype was valid. Am definitely going to acquire this, as I’ve inherited the family slide collection and need a way to enlarge those tiny images to a frameable size. And every so often, I do manage to take a hang-worthy photo …
July 18th, 2009 17:29 | Trey Ratcliff
Cool – well I think you’ll have a good time with it.
July 18th, 2009 18:48 | Brian
How does this compare to Alien Skin Blowout?
July 18th, 2009 19:00 | Stephen Zacharias
Any ideas does it work outside of photoshop on its own or with any other editing software out there. I suppose I could go read up but if any knows would be great to know. Thanks!
July 20th, 2009 07:49 | Stuck In Customs
Brian – I am not sure – but all my professional photographer friends in real life do use Genuine Fractals — I have not heard of any using Alien Skin – but this is anecdotal, obviously.
Stephen – I think it only works inside of Photoshop… but I may very well be wrong about that.
July 25th, 2009 00:41 | JayM
Do you use the sharpening component in GF to offset any softness induced from the resampling and maintain the same image sharpness as the original file?
August 3rd, 2009 07:04 | Photography Links – July 31, 2009 « Photo Notes: Photography by Patty Hankins and Bill Lawrence
[...] Stuck in Customs has a review of Genuine Fractals [...]
August 11th, 2009 03:19 | Michael Colynuck
I think it would also be useful to have the before/after images blown up to the same size so it would be obvious just how bad it would be without using the software.
August 11th, 2009 20:47 | Ramon
for small photos can use Reshade.com online
August 20th, 2009 02:25 | Ivy
Trey, from your reviews, it appears we use the same software!
Okay, I give! Where is Secret Lake? Wow–what a great shot!
October 27th, 2009 22:28 | The Dirt Road to the Nuclear Blast Site (And onOne Plugin Suite 5 avail)
[...] Genuine Fractals Review [...]
November 6th, 2009 14:01 | Stuck In Customs
Thanks! Hehe…
Ivy – that lake – you mean in the photo? It’s a little waterfall and lake in Patagonia