Genuine fractals and output to slides

Here is my scenario. The lab I use to output scanned images back to slides requires a 372 DPI file. When I shoot with the D100 and adjust my file size to the output requirement, the DPI is 273. I don't want to have Photoshop interpolate due to quality. My question is twofold.

1. Will the software Genuine Fractals work for digi output back to slides by allowing me to have it adjust the DPI to 372 from 273 and correct this DPI issue, or does it work only for printing?

2. Some claim that you can get up to a 20 by 30 print from a Nikon D100 6 megapixel camera. How is that possible? If you adjust the image size to 20 x 30, the dpi is very low when Photoshop automatically adjusts dpi, lower than the minimum recommendation of somewhere around 250. I suppose I can interpolate but then it is "making up" pixels that may impact image quality.

Any advice would be very helpful and much appreciated.

Joe

Hi Joe,

I've used Genuine Fractals a lot in the past years, but have now found Fred Miranda's Stair Interpolation program to work better (and costs much less). Check out Fred Miranda's web site then look for SI Pro in the plug-ins section.

This program is also good for enlarging files for prints, but... I have seen over and over again that I get better enlargements from digital camera files (highest res and quality) than from slide scans (Nikon CoolScan 4000 ED at highest res and quality) because all of these interpolation programs also enlarge film grain that becomes very noticeable at the bigger sizes. I've tried drum scans at higher res and the film grain still doesn't go away. Labs like Pictopia have their own proprietary interpolation algorithms which are excellent, so you're better off to send the camera tiff file to them unaltered and let them take care of the interpolation. If you are dealing with a pro lab for prints or slides, its best to talk directly with the people who do the output. Its likely they've run into this before and already know exactly what to do for the best quality output.

I haven't been very satisfied with the quality of the slide output I've done from digital files. I got better quality output from a high end film recorder such as an LVT which supports up to 8000 resolution (Kodak made it, Photomation in Anaheim has one...[i know Joe lives in So Cal]). Smaller. lower end film recorders don't require such high resolution but do not match the quality I've seen from that FR in particular. Sounds like you've already got a lab you're working with, so if you're happy with them, the SI Pro might work best for you.

Hope this helps!

Bonnie

Some claim that you can get up to a 20 by 30 print from a Nikon D100 6 megapixel camera. How is that possible?

Joe - In determining how big a print you can make with a given pixel size, you have to consider that the "normal" viewing distance increases with the print size. I have seen some really nice poster-size prints made from a D100 file. From a distance of 4-5 feet, they look great. If you get up to within a few inches, you can see noticeable softness. To make a 20" x 30" print, the printer resolution with a D100 file (3008 x 2000 pixels) would be 100 dpi. Even with some good sharpening/smoothing, the resulting print will be soft at very close range. But if the print was hung on a wall where people would typically view it from 3 feet or more, it would look pretty good (assuming that the original image was in good focus).

Jim

Here are several additional things I've noticed when working with these applications...

If you do any color correction to an image, its better to do the interpolation first. I've noticed that sometimes the interpolation process accentuates things and creates artifacts that have an unnatural look if I do any color correction or retouching. When I scaled up the image directly from the camera with no color correction, I got much better, cleaner results.

I've also noticed that GF does a pretty good job when the starting file size is already pretty big (20 Mb or larger) but does a lousy job when you're trying to scale up a smaller image.

.If you do any color correction to an image, its better to do the interpolation first. I've noticed that sometimes the interpolation process accentuates things and creates artifacts that have an unnatural look if I do any color correction or retouching. When I scaled up the image directly from the camera with no color correction, I got much better, cleaner results.

That's really interesting. Do you scale up images, then, as part of your process or simply keep uncorrected images around in case you need a big version? What is your standard image size if scaling is part of your workflow?

That's really interesting. Do you scale up images, then, as part of your process or simply keep uncorrected images around in case you need a big version? What is your standard image size if scaling is part of your workflow?

I got into the habit of archiving all my digital originals on DVD as a back-up. Sometimes I'll do a color correction that I think is perfect, but when looking at it later, I'll see I may have taken it too far in one direction or another for my particular output. When I look at the images from my first Kodak digital cameras from years ago, in some cases I either shot them wrong, color corrected them wrong, or archived them wrong and because I didn't have the originals, I'm now stuck with what I did back then. The hardware and software I have to work with now is so much better than it was then. So I guess in part, I'm also doing this in anticipation of what amazing technology could develop in the future.

I typically don't scale up images unless I absolutely have to for over-sized output. The images that end up in my final archive are usually as close to the originals as possible and are not resized, cropped or sharpened. I'll do those steps if necessary, depending on what the output is going to be.

I've had lengthy discussions with a pro photographer friend about that type of workflow (scaling up before archiving) and was surprised to hear that he used SI Pro to scale up all his best images to nearly 100 Mb before archiving them to his hard drive. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I guess we need to do whatever works for us.