Genuine Fractals 5 - Texture Controls
June 22, 2007 by Mike Wong • Comments Off
Perhaps one of the coolest new features in Genuine Fractals 5 is that now, for the first time ever, you now have access to some of the key variables in the Genuine Fractals scaling/enlarging algorithm.
The two algorithm variables that may be adjusted are called Amount and Threshold. The default settings are 3 and 25 respectively and will give you results equivalent to what you would have seen in Genuine Fractals 4.1.
However, in Genuine Fractals 5, adjusting these variables can provide improved detail in non edge regions as well as control edge sharpness. Below is a description of each control and recommendations of how to use them.
Amount: This controls the amount of detail in flat, non-edge areas of an image. If your image contains lots of minute detail that does not have defined edges (many organic patterns like leaves, rock, bark; or man made pattens like fabric) it may be good to increase the Gain to a setting of 4 or 5. Settings beyond 5 will often introduce a bumpy noise pattern which may be undesirable unless your original image was from scanned film. Settings lower than the default setting of 3 are useful for images with large areas of continuous tone that have no appreciable detail (sand, snow, sky) but have hard edged foreground subjects such as landscape images, architecture or portraiture.
Threshold: This controls the amount of hard edge detail that is enhanced. The default setting is 25. Decreasing the threshold will focus the algorithms only on edge information. This may be useful for portraiture or for reducing noise in your image. Settings higher than 25 will increase the amount of small detail in flatter areas of the image. Settings as high as 100 are useful for highly detailed images such as hair or feathers.
Please note, this is an update of an earlier post. I wanted to update it because we've changed the names of the controls and wanted to avoid any confusion if someone read the earlier post.