Creating a fractal image

When you first open Ultra Fractal, the default Mandelbrot set is shown. However, we are going to make a new fractal from scratch so we'll ignore this window for now and close it later on. (Closing it now will quit Ultra Fractal on Windows.)

The first step in creating a new fractal is to select a Fractal Formula which determines the structure of the fractal with which we will be working.

To open a new fractal window, click New on the File menu and select Fractal.

This opens the "Select Fractal Formula" browser. The left pane shows three folders (Compatibility, My Formulas, and Public) and a file named "Standard.ufm".

When you click on Standard.ufm, its contents — a list of the formulas it contains, appears in the right pane of the browser window. Each formula appears as a thumbnail that shows a preview of the image that the formula will produce.

• Click on the Newton formula and then on the Open button. (Note: Make sure it's the Newton not the "Embossed Newton" formula!)

This opens a new fractal window, loaded with the Newton formula, which looks like the preview in the browser window above.

Note the Tool Windows on the right side of the fractal window. These tool windows are where you will enter and edit the information which creates the fractal image on your screen. The tool windows are the information center of the program and it is advisable to keep them open at all times.

Now that we have a new fractal window for our Newton fractal, we can go back to the default Mandelbrot fractal window and close it.

• Click on the first Mandelbrot fractal window to activate it. Then click Close on its File menu to close the fractal window.

The Newton fractal window should remain as the only fractal window now.