[filmscanners] RE: Nikon Coolscan

["Laurie Solomon" <laurie@advancenet.net>]

>I understand GF to be a product for....

Ok, close enough.

>If GF is not useful, then questions concerning the form and fact of its
>bundling with Nikon products are moot.

It may be moot to you; but obviously, it is and was not to the original
questioner to whom I was responding.  Since GF and Coolscan may not be
intended to accomplish the same ends as their main purposes, I am not sure
how you manage to attempt a comparison that says if you have one you do not
need the other.

Some people find GF useful for certain purposes as a supplement to scanning
programs in much the same way that they find Photoshop a supplemental image
editing program to the scanning application (such as Coolscan); that you or
others do not find it useful or do not see a reason for it, does not mean
that it is so for everyone.  Would you say that because you have Nikon
Coolscan Photoshop's bicubic interpolation feature is useless; that
interpolation via the scanner software is as good or better than that found
in Photoshop, GF, or other special image editing applications?  For people
who scan 35mm, medium format, and even large format films and need to have
enough resolution to be able to maintain reasonable resolutions of a minimum
of 200-300 dpi after resizing the image to billboard size for outputting to
a wide format inkjet, an offset press, or a Chromira or Lightjet print or
who need to do this post scanning of the image, plug-ins like GF and the
interpolation features of Photoshop might be useful (even more so than the
Coolscan scanning software).  In other words, just because Nikon CoolScan
might have provisions for performing interpolation operations at the time of
scanning does not mean (a) that it is the best interpolation process, (b)
that it is useful and covers all occasions when one might need or wish to
upsample or downsample an image for output, or (c) that it renders any other
application which does those functions useless.

I might understand your question and complaint better if we were talking
about two scanning applications which were duplicates of each other in
features and quality; but I do not understand it in the context of two
different types of programs that are intended to serve different needs and
purposes.  GF is a image editing plug-in application; it is not an
independent application or one that acts as a plugin for scanning programs.
It is a post-scanning and post-image editing tool for producing a resolution
independent file that can be resampled. resized, and cropped anew upon each
opening of the file so as to fit the needs of the job at hand.  It has
nothing at all to do with scanning or even image editing and enhancement.

-----Original Message-----
From: filmscanners_owner@halftone.co.uk
[mailto:filmscanners_owner@halftone.co.uk]On Behalf Of Anthony Atkielski
Sent: Monday, August 05, 2002 5:42 PM
To: laurie@advancenet.net
Subject: [filmscanners] Re: Nikon Coolscan


Laurie writes:

> I am not really sure what you are asking.  Do you
> know what Genuine Fractals is?

I understand GF to be a product for upsizing images using a proprietary
interpolation technique to generate additional pixels.

> I do not recall anyone in this or earlier
> messages on the thread talking about the use
> of the program and if it could or should be
> used as a substitute for Nikon Coolscan.  Hence,
> I am lost as to the reason behind your question
> and why you would ask it here and now.

If GF is not useful, then questions concerning the form and fact of its
bundling with Nikon products are moot.

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