Redfield Fractalius Plug-in

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jimplogger
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Redfield Fractalius Plug-in

Post by jimplogger »

Just wanted to comment on the Redfield Fractalius plug-in. Maybe
you can share this with your newsletter readers. I downloaded
the demo version of Fractalius and have experimented with it now
at length. Seems that this filter, which has some most
interesting effects, works well only with small files (500KB or
less). An answer from John Redfield in an email verified that
the filter is not designed for large files. $39.95 is a pretty
steep price for a filter that doesn't work well on large files.
I did apply the filter to a 2MB file and it took over 20 minutes
to complete. Most of us photographers now work with large files
created in a RAW format and expect plug-ins that will perform
well on images that are well above 40MB. It would appear that
this is an excellent filter if your images are designed for web
use where small images normally are used, but I question the
value of this plug-in to photographers who rely on large images
for print.

HaraldHeim
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Post by HaraldHeim »

The Fractalius algorithm seems to be quite render intensive.

There is usually a way to improve the speed of an algorithm, but that usually means a lot of work. The easiest method is to support multiple cores. According to my tests Fractalius seems to only do that for parts of the algorithm and not all of the image processing code.

Still, there are a few algorithms that cannot be made faster and you have to wait for faster processors to show up. But it is hard to tell if that is the case with Fractalius.

xymonau
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Post by xymonau »

It is very slow to render, and there are minor - but not unsightly - patchy areas on larger images. Nevertheless, the results are often beautiful - even spectacular - and I think it is well worth the money.

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