Lizardtech's MrSID vs. Genuine Fractals

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Does anybody have any idea how the wavelet based compression of MrSID stacks up against Genuine Fractals? Now that I can get MrSID for free, I'm very leery of shelling out the bucks for Genuine Fractals. On the other hand, GF can do lossless compression and MrSID is lossy. Has anybody measured the difference?

-- Drury Woodson (drury@woodson.net), April 05, 2000

Answers

I "think" MrSID compresses much smaller as it's intended primarily for compression, but I don't believe it offers the ability to scale images larger for printing like Genuine Fractals. At least I saw no mention of that on their site? They only mentioned the ability to zoom in deeper with more(?) detail? If that translates to increased resolution? Frankly, their site is VERY sketchy on details...

I think you're comparing apples and oranges as Genuine Fractals is really an image encoder that happens to reduce file size to some degree while performing it's true function of turning a raster image into a fractally based vector(I'm guessing that's a fair assessment? Anyone really up on fractal transforms or the math, speak up?) image file. I think it reduces image file size slightly, but when you compare the file size to the file size that would be required to express that image at the larger sizes GF is capable of rendering them at they're much more compact. (I hope that made some semblence of sense?)

Simply put GF = larger images from smaller files, MrSID = smaller files to store your images... maybe there is more to MrSID, but if so they're making it darned hard to find it...

Anybody tried it out yet? I have such rotten ISP connections lately, that I haven't tried to download either.

-- Gerald M. Payne (gmp@francomm.com), April 06, 2000.


I downloaded the MrSID products today and gave them a try. Gerald is right on the money! I have used GF PrintPro for awhile now and it does everything claimed. MrSID does also. MrSID is really about compression. GF compresses, but the main function is "resolution independence", or the ability to scale an image to any size from one encoded file. MrSID has the ability to compress a given image to a very small size then decode again with one of its viewers, with little or no loss in quality. This depends, of course, on how extreme you go with the compression. MrSID does not have the ability to scale the images to very large sizes without pixelization--GF does. MrSID files are MrSID files forever. They cannot be converted back to jpeg or tiff or whatever. They must be viewed by MrSID viewers.

MrSID comes in several varieties used by scientists, cartographers, etc.--I'm only talking about the free ones. They include a stand- alone encoder, a stand-alone viewer, a Photoshop plug-in viewer (Mac & PC), a Photoshop plug-in encoder (Mac only--free?), and a browser plug-in viewer. I tried all but the plugin for Mac. The only one that allows you any freedom for print resizing is the Photoshop plugin, but you'll have to satisfy yourself on this point. I guess it comes down to what you are wanting to do? If you want to transmit or store images in the most compact form possible and have great looking images from a proprietary viewer only, then MrSID is your software. If you want the ability to store one image file at decent compression rates, with the ability to scale to unbelievable sizes (relatively speaking) and still save and edit the image in other popular formats, then Genuine Fractals wins.

I hope this helps.

Jeff

-- Jeff Campbell (jcampbll@pacbell.net), April 08, 2000.


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