QUOTE(ballester @ Sep 11 2003, 2:54 AM)
I'm thinking in buying this because of the propanganda in the Extensis web site in order to make bigger prints (11 X 14, and if it is possible, of course) of some photos of a 2MP camera... but I'm really not sure of the wonders of this product
A very important thing to remember is that absolutely, positively
nothing--no algorithm, no technique, nothing--can increase the number of pixels in a pixel image and create detail that does not exist in the original.
Nothing. It is not even theoretically possible.
Expensive programs like Genuine Fractals and SmartScale can sometimes produce results that are somewhat better than scaling up in Photoshop, for some images--emphasis on "sometimes," "somewhat," and "some images."
But increasing the size or resolution of a pixel-based image will always decrease its quality. Always. The computer is inventing pixels out of thin air. No matter how clever the guesses about what these pixels' values should be, they are still just guesses.
Consider, for example, that you have a picture of a dog. The dog is so small that its eye is just one pixel. Can the computer look at that one pixel and re-construct an eye from it? No; there's no way to create detail.
So bear that in mind. The breathless, hysterical marketing hype that surrounds programs like SmartScale and Genuine Fractals is just that--hype.
