When I began with UF, I found it very intuitive. It was still a steep learning curve, and I feel I still have a long way to go. The thing that made it a bit easier is that I understood the way the gradient worked fairly early on, and that has made a huge difference. I am not very successful with many other fractal programs, mainly because I don't feel 'in control' of the coloring. In fact, I find XenoDream's interface very intimidating, and I feel 'blind' when I try to work with it. You should consider joining the UF Mailing List. There are lots of people sending in parameter files that you can study to see how they 'did that'. A warning though, they generate lots of emails (up to 60 a day) so you might want to get a free email account at yahoo or hotmail just for the List. Good Luck.

Fractals will always amaze me!