Mike Williams wrote:
> 
> Wasn't it Spider who wrote:
> >> There's a big difference here. No successful fractal compression
> >> algoithm exist. There surely is a great potential here, but no
> >> algorithm for effectively turning an image into a set of fractal
> >> functions.
> >
> >There are.
> >Do a web search for the .fif format, Fractal Image Format I belive it
> >is. Graphic Workshop could/can read it, and it was great for photos, but
> >I've lost all references to it over the years.
> 
> There is a shareware program, Fractal Imager, at http://www.iterated.com
> that can encode and decode FIF format files.
Ahh. I knew it was there somewhere. 
 
> Some drawbacks with fractal image compression are:
> 
>  The algorithms are patented, and the owners of the patents are not
>  making them freely available. In particular, they've only made the
>  algorithms available on a small number of operating systems.

I think I mentioned this in the other post, and I agree, it is a bad
thing. But there is such a thing as successful fractal compression :p 
The lack of support(platforms), and the somewhat bothersome interface(at
least IMO back then) is also a drawback.

>  The time taken to encode a file is quite noticeable - as much as 68
>  seconds for an 800x600 image on my 500MHz machine, and probably quite a
>  bit longer on the machines that were commonly available on 1995.

Yes... it was time consuming, but then I thought the quality was quite
remarkable, and filesizes in comparsion were quite small as well.

I ran it on a 486 DX2 - 66, as far as I can remember.. It was a mess..
but it ran :)



-- 
//Spider    --  [ spider@bahnhof.se ]-[ http://darkmere.wanfear.com/ ]
And the devil in black dress watches over
    My guardian angel walks away
Life is short and love is always over in the morning
    Black wind come carry me far away
            --"Sisters of Mercy" -- "Temple Of Love"

Post a reply to this message