Exporting and rendering

To use the artwork that you create in Ultra Fractal for printing or on the web, you have to export it or render it to disk. This will create a bitmap image of the fractal, ready for further processing.

You can directly export the image from a fractal window to a bitmap image. Click Export Image on the File menu, enter a file name, and click Save. See File formats for a description of the image file formats that are supported.

Usually though, you will want to render your artwork to disk. Rendering to disk provides the following benefits:

Anti-aliasing for improved image quality. This is especially important if you are preparing images for the web. See Anti-aliasing (render to disk).
More accurate color blending and merging. When a fractal is rendered to disk, the colors are calculated more accurately than the fractal window does, producing smoother, higher quality images.
Support for large images. You can render images up to 100,000 by 100,000 pixels. Because the images are rendered to disk, the size is not limited by available memory (RAM).
Entire parameter files can be rendered to disk with one command, producing multiple images.

For animations, rendering is essential, since these cannot be exported normally.

Notes

Exporting and rendering a fractal only saves the fractal as a bitmap image. You cannot open this image in Ultra Fractal. Always save your fractal as a parameter set or a fractal file as well to be able to open it in Ultra Fractal later.
To export a fractal as an image, you can also click Copy Image on the Edit menu. See Copying and pasting fractals.
If you are using an evaluation copy of Ultra Fractal, exported and rendered images will be marked with Evaluation Copy text. To fully enable exporting and rendering images, you must purchase your copy of Ultra Fractal. See Purchasing Ultra Fractal.

Next: Rendering images