Stunning fractals made easy
A fractal is defined as "a geometric pattern that is repeated at ever smaller scales to produce irregular shapes and surfaces..." They are not only drawn completely with mathematics, they are aesthetically pleasing. Most people have seen the most widely known fractal, the Mandlebrot set, but there are many, many more beautiful fractals than just that one.
Because of their nature, fractals are nearly impossible to effectively draw by hand, but rather are far more frequently rendered on a computer. While this process used to take hours to complete, faster processors and FPUs (which speed up mathematical funtions) allow you to complete a rough picture in only seconds. Rendering a 640x480, 16-bit color, anti-aliased Mandelbrot set took a mere 3.5 minutes on a 603e/200 system. A more complex fractal took 7 minutes, which is still impressive.
Once you have these 
beautifully rendered fractals, what can you do with them? For starters, they make excellent backgrounds for images to create in other graphics programs (Like Photoshop) and by themselves, they make fine desktop pictures. Experimenting with filters in Photoshop can make even cooler effects.
With Fractal Domains, you have all of the flexibility you could ask for. You can control the dimensions of the fractal, and what area of the fractal appears in the window. This makes it even more suitable for adding to Photoshop images, because it allows you to customize the fractal for your purpose. You can also control the color of your image, allowing you to match it with the color scheme of the rest of your image. And because of the mathematical nature of fractals, you can change your fractal drastically just by adjusting the numbers the program uses.
Although fractals are a very complex concept, you can still create visually pleasing images with some experimentation. Even the default settings produce some very impressive images. This program is also useful as tool to teach fractals. But is it worth the $20? Graphic artists and math teachers will find it very useful, but for most people it's just a cool little program that draws fancy graphics. Sure, you can make a few desktop pictures, but it's not entirely useful for most people.
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 SRP: $20 (payable through Kagi) |