Avoid Perfect Resize 7 (formerly Genuine Fractals)

[nemophoto]

I've used Genuine Fractals for about 15-years (give or take). Generally, I've been happy with the program. The latest version, I have to say, stinks. In a nutshell, everything takes longer than GF6. On the average, everything on my system takes about 8-10 seconds to render - whether it's turning sharpening on or off to see the effect, or changing viewing magnification from 1:2 to 1:1, or scrolling to another section to view. At first I thought it was my system. Apparently, they've gone to OpenGL for onscreen rendering from whatever was used before. I replaced my video card (for other reasons as well) to one of the newest, an nVidia GTX 560 Ti, no real effect. There was also virtually no difference between 32-bit and 64-bit Photoshop. Then I thought it might be some sort of incompatability with my AMD Phenom II x4 CPU, so I tried it on my Sony notebook which has an i7 mobile chip. Wow, that took almost double the time to do any given action. The final test was resizing a 1Ds III 8-bit file, enlarging it to 170%. It took PR7 about a minute, whereas GF6 took about about 30-seconds -- and no visible difference in quality. (As a comparison, Alien Skin's Blow Up 2 took nearly a minute.)

If you have GF6, or maybe even GF5, save your money.

Nemo

[Robcat]

I've also noticed the increased processing time with PR7 but the output did strike me as a bit better, though I confess not to have done any testing. Just that 200% enlargements seemed cleaner to me. Hope I'm not imagining it but could be  Does take longer, though.
Rob P

[digitaldog]

Just that 200% enlargements seemed cleaner to me.

On a print?

[Robcat]

On a print?

Yes, both paper and canvas.
But like I said, I didn't do a formal comparison using the same image on the different versions, just that in general w. my 5d I started being unhappy at 20 x 30 size prints using GF6 and w. the PR7 I wasn't. OTOH, I don't think it's a placebo effect as I was not expecting any difference w. the newer version.
Interested what other folks have/haven't noticed.
Rob P

[digitaldog]

Yes, both paper and canvas.

Interesting. I just did some tests about a week ago sizing up a 5DMII image 250% using version 7, Photoshop, step interpolation, Lightroom (with and without capture sharpening). On a print, the differences between Photoshop and PR7 were basically invisible. Took over 5 minutes for PR7 to process the data, something like 13 seconds for Lightroom (including save to disk) and 3 seconds in Photoshop (not saved to disk).

[Shane Webster]

How did the Lightroom version stack up against Photoshop/PR7, Andrew?

[digitaldog]

How did the Lightroom version stack up against Photoshop/PR7, Andrew?

LR was a tad cleaner but on the print, it was a wash. The key however was proper capture sharpening prior to any resizing! Night and day differences. So in terms of speed, quality and workflow, applying capture sharpening in LR and just letting it resample was the fastest process producing the best results.

[Shane Webster]

Thanks for the update, Andrew.