I love UltraFractal and found it absolutley daunting for about a month, maybe two. But one thing made me keep at it. I could understand the interface!! Which I can't for most of the other programs out there. I have no idea what I'm doing in Sterlingware and TierraZone and never have had an idea, though it was quicker for me to make something that looked like a fractal in them. I think I was lucky. I got UF when the Ultra Fractal list was at it's height and fantastic people were sharing their uprs and creating new colorings and playing with them for the first time and it was easy to learn after it dawned on me that I could. Number freak me out. I will never write a formula. But I'll also never use all the formuals available so why should I? Especially when geniuses like Andreas can write them and let me play. I like the layers. I like to pile them on. I'll create a new layer just to see how much I can change the darn thing this time. [oh yeah, ruined some stuff that way, till I learned to throw some away] Second level favorite is FraxFlame-- if it'll will run faster than it did on my Mac. I wasted hours of rendering there-- not that it's wasted, I still have the presets. My only problem with FraxFlame is the struggle with gradients-- I don't find the gradient maker intuitive-- and the problem that once rendered the flame was always a bit disappointing, not as great as the preview hinted. I never did reach Laurent's heights with FraxFlame. Emily