For those of you who have never heard of it, The GIMP is a free, full featured image manipulation program. Since The GIMP isn't really supported at Renderosity (yet), I am going to be doing a series of images (possibly 40-50 images, maybe more, depends on how many preset fractal settings are in The GIMP's fractal explorer) and then writing a tutorial on how to manipulate the presets and even create your own using several different sets (Mandelbrot, Julia, Barnsley 1-3, Spider, Lambda, Man'O'War, and Sierpinksi) and the ability to input many, many parameters such as XMIN, XMAX, YMIN, YMAX, ITER, CX, CY; various coloring properties, and a large set of 'default' fractal types. I will try to give as much info as I think relevant when the fractal was created. If anyone has any input or questions, feel free to ask.

Attached Link: http://www.arcanefractals.com

Maybe you are already aware that the Gimp for windows can also make great flame fractals. I have a gallery of flame fractals on my website www.arcanefractals.com/flame.shtml and these were all made in the Gimp (for windows systems). Some of the images are actually one flame rendered ontop of another. There is a tutorial on my site that explains how to use the Gimp flame plugin.

Looking forward to your tutorials.

Fran

The second image in my gallery here (and on my web site) was made using the flame fractal, and I think I will include some sort of flame fractal in all my example images, just because I like the effect it gives the image. I'll be sure to look over your tut, though. Never know what I'll learn that'll help me in my endeavor. (:

This is terrific, I have recently downloaded the gimp but have yet to use it. I'm excited about these tutorials...thanks

No prob! It's actually going to be one tut on making your own fractals with The GIMP. It's probably going to take me the rest of the year at the rate I'm going though. Hehe.

I'm glad you're going to do this. I have very little patience with the way fractals are done in Gimp, so, I never spent much time on trying. I have gotten some nice flames, though.

Yeah, the flame generator is very cool. Well, since I have no pre-conceived notions on how fractals should be done... (;

What I mean is, FE is easy to use compared to Gimp. I feel like I have more control. Also, more options. Maybe I didn't give it enough of a chance. I'm hoping your tuts will show me that.

Ah. I do have on big complaint about FE. You cannot generate more then one fractal at a time (I haven't tried saving then generating another, though) and you cannot render fractals on transparent layers. Makes no sense.

You're right about FE's limitations, but, that's when I open up Gimp...:)

Well, I was talking about the Fractal Explorer IN The GIMP.

Does anyone else have problems with the colors getting washed out or faded, when creating large fractals with the GIMP? I've been trying to make some large enough for a good sized print, but the colors almost always come out faded.

I can't get it to run on Win2k. Used to use it on the old win 9x systems. Bummer.

Join the GIMP for Windows users mailing list. I think a year or so ago there was someone who had a problem with The GIMP on Win2K. Can't remember if they got that one resolved or not. As for color fading, how big of an image are we talking about? I imagine bigger then 1024x768, but I want to be sure.

Actually I'm having trouble with images over 512x512. Sometimes I can just adjust the brightness and contrast in PSP 7, but not on all of the faded images.

There's a WinGimp users group on Yahoo, that deal with problems. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gimpwin-users/ Hope that helps. I know it helped me with some problems I had.

Thanks for the link DaMonk. As for the image fading, very odd indeed, I hope you get it solved asap!

I loaded up the gimp and it is crashing my computer, I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling about 3 different times. So it looks like for now I am Gimpless! I'm running Win ME...ok don't laugh it came with this machine ;-(

Skye, See my reply #6. There is lots of help there, at that site. The install problem is quite common, I believe. If they can't help you, I will find the time to do what I can to help. I'm no expert, but, I had to uninstall and reinstall a few times. It turns out, I didn't uninstall all the files, as that is important before attempting to reinstall. (had to find them using Windows explorer). But, I found the answers to all my gimp issues there at the yahoo wingimp site. It's well worth going. I love my Gimp! :)