By Daniel East
onOne Software (http:www.oneononesoftware.com) has rebranded Genuine Fractals, the industry standard for image resizing, as Perfect Resize.
The new version has quite a few improvements to make enlarging your images easier and faster, but most importantly, look substantially better than what you can do with Photoshop alone. Many features on users’ wish lists were addressed by onOne to create a real creative tool versus what was considered a utility plug-in.
The output quality is better than ever, and given the improvement in quality of poster printers for small studios, professional photographers will get excellent results from nearly any DSLR with less time and money spent on reprinting test prints. In addition to the new name, some great features were added.
One, in particular, is Tiling so that nearly any printer (that supports full-bleed output) can be used to assemble large posters. Cropping, Texture Control, Film Grain, and Gallery Wrap are all features that are easy to employ from within the workspace after launching the plug-in from the File>Automate menu.
Getting the sharpest, most accurate output is easier in this new update with the addition of a Loupe viewer and Smoothness control that help to dramatically reduce visual artifacts. The onscreen viewing may be deceiving, depending on magnification, but the prints are very good and lose the stand-way-back-to-look-good effect often required with increasing image resolution.
Perfect Resize 7 is available individually or as part of the Perfect Photo Suite bundle and is an excellent value—either way. onOne Software offers free support, as well as online tutorials, so it’s very intuitive for all levels of users. The Professional Edition is extremely useful, but if you don’t need CMYK support, gallery wrapping, or support for Lightroom and Aperture, a Standard Edition ($159.95) is also available. The industry standard not only maintains its title but also raises the bar for creative professionals.
Rating: 10 out of 10
(This review is brought to you courtesy of “Layers Magazine”: http://layersmagazine.com/