I have used FE for years, but all of the sudden my images are starting to look blurry.  When I am in FE the images look crisp and fine, but when I put them in Photoshop Elements to put a signature they look terribly blurry.  Does anyone know why this may be happening?  I would appreciate anyones help in this matter.  Thank you!

Hi Newpy,

I don't recognize the problems you mentioned.  Are they restricted to FE or do you have the same experiences with other fractal software, UF or others? You can save FE images in gif, jpg, and even in bmp. In that latter case you don't heave loss of ony color information.
I mostly save in jpg format and then I don't have problems when postprocessing using Paint Shop Pro 9.  Maybe the cause of blurring will be in Photoshop Elements?  But in that case you also the same problems with UF and other fractal software.

Ed Algra

Were you previously re-sizing your images to a smaller size, and now you aren't?  Re-sizing down makes your image sharper and more clear.  Also, the more times you open a jpg, the more artifacts are left behind on the edges which makes it look blurry.

I hope you can figure it out!

~Viv 

Fractals will always amaze me!

  As a general rule: render as large as you can in FE using 4-point AA - to get rid of as much jaggedness as possible - then save the reult as a BMP file to retain the full amount of data in the picture. Open the picture in your favorite graphics program and there resize it to whatever size you wish - this will give you additional "anti-jaggedness". If your render-size is reasonably big then you can even raise the resolution (dpi) to f.ex. 200 or 300 while downsizing, for better reults when printing - if that's something you do. Finally, in your graphics program, use the sharpening tool to enhance the features of the picture. Then save it as .jpg (don't go below 85-90% quality for jpgs...) or .bmp, depending on what you want to do with it.

 By "large" I mean really large. If you want your end product in the order of f.ex. 800 x 600, then you should render it first at a size of at least 3,200 x 2,400 pixels or bigger. This will of course increase the render time considerably since the render-process in FE makes calculations for each individual pixel in the picture. Find a good balance between size and render-time. 

 The render process can be done in the background using the batch-render option. It'll take a little longer this way, but if f.ex. you are using a system with more than 1 processor core then you will be able to use the machine for other purposes while the batch-processing is going on.