I use Paint Shop Pro and it opens them fine

Ummm........what they said! Hey, great answers, if a little incoherent at times LOL :)

Sorry I havent replied earlier, i have been away on a business trip with no time or access to the net other than a very quick check on email headers. Thanks for the replies :) Im not sure in the ended I worded it as well as I could have, but hey, its interesting to find out why people use the software you do. Stacey

Interesting and pertinent discussion. I have certainly been somewhat boggled by the response to my images. Usually how it works is the ones 'I' like the most are the ones that others are less impressed by, and they seem to like the ones I think are ok. Usually if I have something I think is outstanding, it usually gets a positive response but it is interesting to see how people respond to your work :)

OK im not really sure how you pre process, unless its something like take a UF image and chuck it into Bryce or XD? Post processing to me is one of two things: Tweaking the image to improve it without radical changes: Sharpen, blur, rezise, crop, frame, add sig etc Further Processing the image: use of filters to give diff effects like watercolour, painted etc. The first is a necessity, no one ever creates a perfect image, the second is a matter of choice. And FWIW I did ask to take my Dogwaffle discussion off list. Stacey

Hey I heard about Dogwaffle a while ago, and it looked good, but I dont like just downloading everything I see that looks good. I prefer to find out what people who use it think. Could you email me off list with details? Im a PSP user

I work on the principle that you do what you can to achieve the final result that you are after. And if its Post pro required then do so :) Easy! Stacey

Hey this is all very interesting! Going to throw my 2c in here :-) Personally im not interested in seeing the forum flooded with images, just cos you can. If there are artists out there so prolific and stifled by the 3 a day limit, then get another site. Get 3! Geocities offers you 3 websites (on 3 diff topics) with 15MB space and subdirectories and all sorts. There are LOTS of options out there for posting heaps of pix. Im not into the technical side of mathematical calculations basically because I dont understand them, but surely here is the best place to start this kind of discussion. And its not limited to UF either. I know there are a few XD users out there, and we ALL need as much help with learning that as we can get :-)))))) Its a matter of putting our heads together and coming up with good questions, suggestions, ideas, tutorials. I would love someone to explain the really simple basics of UF, cos thats where I came unstuck with it, I couldnt find a step by step explanation at a level I needed. Most of the time people seem to assume you kinda had some exposure and half an idea about that kind of fractal design. I have no idea what the diff between a Julia and a Mandelbrot fractal is (and I admit this in public too LOL) Stacey - shutting up now!

Well im only a newbie at this fractal stuff but this is what I did. I searched thru hours and hours of surfing peoples galleries and I made note of the images I liked and tried to find what program they made the image in ***. Then I found the various sites for the programs and checked them out in detail. Then I downloaded the ones I liked. The 2 free ones I started with were Sterling and QS Flame. And that was all she wrote until I happened across an image in a fellow Terrageneer's gallery made with a program called Xenodream. After visiting that website I thought really hard about it for an hour then logged on and bought the damn thing, sight unseen and no demo, and Ive never regretted it! I have also tried Ultra Fractal which allows free use for 30 days but I found it REALLY REALLy hard to understand. ***(where possible - its really important to note on your websites what programs you use for a particular image for peoples like me - and im sure im not the only one:) Anyway hope that helps Stacey

Whats Carnival Glass? Its to do with the combination of settings in the Metamorph colour options, the meta Pattern one, the one on the right seemed to have the most effect

Sounds entirely fair! Now to get fractalling!

Hey im flying by the seat of my pants too yanno!

Dont Drink Coffee :) gasp Contests, Prizes and Challenges all sound good, tho with the diversity of the programs we use, could be a challenge in and off themselves. Perhaps a poll to see who is here and who is using what, and rotate them depending on the popularity of the programs? Theme Challenges are good, and that way it doesnt really matter what program you use, as you create the image as to how you see it in your program eg Flowers, Rainbow, Spiral, Abstract are all ideas you could use for a Theme challenge. Always keen on Prizes, even if its an award gif to go up on a webpage :)

Well it involves increasing the Gain (you have to tweak it a bit) Applying the colour by Metamorph, and that brings up some new options. You have to play with those called Holon Modifer, Meta Pattern (there are three for Red Green and Blue). You also have to play with the Metamorph style, ive found Last works best, and you have to tick the box called Wrap and play with the Edge settings. Its quite complicated!

Is it going in or out? Great image :)