I know that Paragon5 (William) uses Chaoscope quite a bit and beautifully. You might try emailing him for tips (he is not on much lately, so email would be better than IM) I know it uses .map files for gradients, and that the gradients are handled very differently than on other apps. That being said, I believe it's fairly user friendly and easy to get some nice results. Good luck!

Fractals will always amaze me!