Seems like a whole load of guilt at play here. Look, fractal art is different from conventional painting-type art, and the methods a fractal artist uses to create an image are different too. In fact abstract painting is different from conventional painting in much the same way. Abstract painters don't always plan out their works. They follow their noses too. Same for photographers. I don't know how many times I've heard that an award winning photograph "just happened." If an improvisational musician were to plan out in detail what he was going to play it wouldn't be improvisation would it? The best jam sessions are when the band just takes off and lets it all happen. Some times it's pure magic. We have a different art medium here and it's not gonna fall into the same artistic formula as any other. Just because we stumble onto our best work doesn't in any way detract from it. It's just the same for a jazz musician, he gets his best stuff when he lets it go. I take exception to what is implied in urchin1996's post, that is, if you haven't gone through the aforementioned process you can't be making art. To me that sounds like a classical musician telling a jazz musician that he doesn't make music. And that's a great load of hooey. I've heard classical musicians who couldn't move anyone emotionally. Sure they can play or sing scales like a meadowlark and sight read like a computer but that's not the point of art. It's the passion, the emotion that defines art. And the 'wonder of beauty' (there's a word for that I think) is the emotion that abstract art evokes mostly. Sure, it's not compassion over social injustice or any complex emotion, but someone who want to express these should be writing poetry or something, not creating abstract fractals. The fractal software is my paint, my instrument, my camera, and I'll brush it, play it and point it at anything I want. If I try to plan out an image it usually doesn't work as well as when I 'go looking' for inspiration, in the same manner that Rick describes. I firmly disagree with the notion that the software is the artist unless you go about creating art from the top down. Has anyone tried to create a fractal image without looking at it? I mean, just let the software do it all? It won't work. You'd get the same results through random generation. OK the random stuff Apo generates can be interesting at times, but the software doesn't know that it is. The selection process alone is an artistic action, in the same way as when a painter selects a color. And once a randomly generated flame is selected a "flame artist" will surely manipulate it over and over again. All this manipulation is artistic input. It may not require the same level of physical skill that an oil painter employs but it is artistic input none the less. The skill in this case is in the seeing not the physical aspect. So what makes a good fractal artist? The same things that makes a good jazz musician. A superior artistic sense, bravery, technical skill and expressiveness, to name a few. And Rick, you have a lot of all these. Hang in there man. Tim