We have upgraded to Ultrafractal 4.1 (no anim). Because my friend bought the previous version before we were together, I am, despite the upgrade totally new to this program. And he is far too busy with his paintings so I have taken over the digital department. (lucky me). But I have to find out things myself. Having some experience in Photoshop and Dreamweaver, Ultrafractal is in some ways familiar. The interface is really superbly designed and many options are rather clear (formula, inside, outside,...). What the detailed settings exactly do is not clear -a matter of experience I guess- but the overall feel is very positive. I intend to do all the tutorials that come with it, but at the moment I am just playing with it. I downloaded and installed the public formulae and try out all possible settings. The gradient is an example of how gradients should be created. I only have one problem: I can open the gradient window and tweak as much as I want, but the icons for Fractal and Gradient are blank, and the menu and F4 don't work either. Is this normal? I also noticed that there are courses by Janet Parke-Preslar (hope I spell it right) to be followed on Visual Academy. Did anyone follow these? And one last question: are you Ultrafractal users all mathematicians? I ask because I don't see myself write any formulae...

Here's a link to an UF tutorial you might want to try: http://market.renderosity.com/%7Efractal/CommunityPage/Links-FracTutorials.htm It explains mostly how to make masks with the gradient editor(alpha channel stuff). It also shows how to use the "Switch Mode" to find pleasing spirals with formulae that support it. You can tell by whether or not the Switch Mode icon along the top toolbar is greyed out. And it shows how to make some textures and apply them to different areas of a fractal with masks. It's a "walk-thru" type thing where you are shown step by step how to make a specific image. The parameters of the image is provided at the bottom of the tutorial so that you can copy the strange jumble of text and right-click paste it into any open fractal window in UF. You can use it to check yourself as you go along. If you know some Photoshop, then the layering and merging stuff you'll understand right away. What's neat about UF is the super easy way you scale, rotate and position the image or just one or a few layers of the image by "zooming" or holding down Ctrl or Alt while you drag with your maose cursor within the fractal window. MUCH easier than the clunky way PS does it with the "transforms" junk. Never could figure why Adobe didn't see fit to supply hot keys to do that stuff. One thing you can't do in UF is "flatten". You can, however, either render the image to disk with anti-aliasing built in or just export it in whatever file format you want and then it would open in PS as a single layer that is a flattened version of your fractal layers in UF. When you get to the point where you are using a lot of layers - I've done them with as many as 170 - it's best to work within a small fractal window as changes take a LONG time to complete if you try to work in a really big window. I use 444x333, typically. Have fun! Rick

Welcome to the Fractal Asylum...ermmm...Forum :) The tutorials are terrific for UF, and you will learn quickly since you have some PS experience. The second thing (after the Tuts) to know is that there is a terrific UF mailing list. The down side is that they generate huge numbers of emails, so I recommend getting a free email account with hotmail or yahoo just for the list. The up side is that it is full of knowledgable and generous people. Here is the URL where you can sign up for it: http://www.ultrafractal.com/mailinglist.html Here is a wonderful tutorial by Janet Parke (who also wrote the Help File tutorials, I believe) that is just about using the gradient window: http://www.parkenet.org/jp/ufgradienthints.html I heard that she was going to be holding a class on Visual Academy but I wasn't able to do it at this time, I hope she repeats it. As to math...well, I do know that 2+2=something like 4ish...there are so many formulae in the database, I am quite content to just let someone else do the math :) I hope that was helpful.

Oh yeah - I don't know much past algebra, either... :-)

Attached Link: http://www.ultrafractal.org/tiki-index.php

My guess is that the icons are blank (and F4 doesn't work) because you're working with a copy of a gradient instead of the actual gradient for an open fractal image. Open an image first and then open its gradient. I'm just finishing up the first fractal course at the Visual Art Academy. I think the students have felt the course is valuable but I hope they'll post their first-hand experiences. The course will be repeated beginning November 1. Class size is limited, so anyone who is interested should probably not wait too long to register. http://visual-arts-academy.com/janet_uf.html Janet

Thanks for your replies. Indeed, I tried again -this time I didn't maximize the windows- and I could see how the gradient tweaks changed the colours of the fractal. Nice indeed. I will add those tutorials, and the data from ultrafractal org. November 1st...this gives me two weeks to get through all the tutorials that come with it, and read the manual. This may be a bit quick. But I'll see...who knows how steep the curve really is for me?

I started with UF on june 2001, and I'm still learning each day. Even I make a fractal a day (keeps the doctor away). LOL.