These five images were created with the shareware Macintosh program Fractal Domains. You can find a web site devoted to this program at:
http://membes.aol.com/ddemars/fracppc.html
More information on Fractal Domains can be found at the end of this document.
There are two versions of this package. Both contain five 832 X 624 images suitable for use as backdrops for your desktop using the "Desktop Pictures" control panel in MacOS 8. The two versions of the archive files are named:
fractal-desktop-v1-for-8.sit (Desktop pictures optimized for 8-bit displays)
fractal-desktop-v1-for-24.sit (Desktop pictures optimized for 24-bit displays)
Both packages contain 8-bit (256 color) PICT files, but one uses a custom palette for each file. These pictures produce high-quality images if your display is using 16-bit or 24-bit color (thousands or millions of colors).
Unfortunately, such images are not displayed well on an 8-bit (256 color) display because the image's custom palette is not used for desktop pictures on these displays, and the picture is displayed using the system palette. This usually causes severe banding and cross-hatching which distracts greatly from the quality of the image. For this reason, I have provided an alternate version that uses the system palette with dithering to produce images that are acceptable for use on an 8-bit display. These images are grainier than the original images, but they look much better as desktop pictures on 8-bit displays than the images that are not dithered in this manner.
Using the version optimized for your display is very important. The images optimized for 24-bit displays look terrible on 8-bit displays. The images optimized for 8-bit displays look good on 24 bit displays, but the versions optimized for 24-bit displays look spectaular. If you don't have the version that's optimized for your display, I encourage you to download the correct version at one of the sites that carry Mac shareware and freeware, or at:
http://members.aol.com/ddemars/download.html
Usage
Any of these images can be used as a desktop picture if you are using Mac OS 8. Copy the file to your hard disk and select the image using the "Desktop Pictures" control panel.
You can also arrange to have the computer randomly pick one of these images to be the desktop picture everytime you restart your computer. Put all of the images you want to use in this manner into a single folder on your hard disk, and open the "Desktop Pictures" control panel. Drag the folder containing the images to the picture of the display in the control panel, and then click "Set Desktop."
Description of Images
The following images are enclosed in this archive:
“Blue Cascade” - A stunning image, especially the optimized for 24-bit version, rendered using a single color gradient.
“Candy Spiral” - One of my personal favorites.
“Dragon Squares” - If some of these images seem too loud and intense to keep around on your desktop, you might want to consider this image. Beautiful and elegant, it uses a small palette of subdued shades and leaves plently of blank space at the borders.
“Snail Shell I” - This seems to be a big favorite with everybody. Finely detailed with nice shading.
“Unfolding” - I have a color version of this in my WWW gallery, but I think the black & white version, enclosed with this package, is very striking. It demonstrates that you don't need a color palette with a zillion colors to produce a compelling image. This image looks practically as good on 8-bit displays as it does on 24-bit displays.
Notes
The images for 24 bit display could have been made of even higher quality by providing 24-bit PICTs rather then 8-bit PICTs. In fact, the original images generated by Fractal Domains were 24-bit images. However, this would have resulted in a much larger archive, and for many of these images the increase in quality would be slight (for “Blue Cascade” and “Unfolding,” both of which use a single color gradient, there would be little or no improvement).
If you have an 8-bit display, you can still look at the versions with the custom palette by using a graphics file viewer such as JPEGView. These applications will use each image's custom palette to display the image. However, these won't look too good as desktop pictures because those are always displayed using the system palette.
About Fractal Domains
Fractal Domains is an application that generates fractal images. It runs only on the Power Macintosh. Fractal Domains generates color images of the most popular fractal, the Mandelbrot set, and also generates images of the associated Julia sets (other fractal types will follow shortly). Fractal Domains has several options for producing striking variations of fractal images, and includes advanced features for producing high-quality images. Fractal Domains features include:
- Generation of Mandelbrot and Julia sets
- Editable color maps
- Options for generating dwell values
Escape Time
Continuous Potential
Angular Decomposition
Distance Estimation
- Orbit Trap Fractals, including
Stalks (cross- shaped orbit trap)
Imaginary or Real Stalks
Circular
Square
- Several options for dividing fractals into regions with distinct color maps.
- Professional features for quality image generation including:
Full support for 24-bit color images.
Image rendering with anti-aliasing.
Spooling large images to disk
(allows generation of images too large to fit into RAM).
Fractal Domains is shareware. Some features are restricted in the unregistered version, although you can do quite a bit in the unregistered version. Details can be found in the user's manual and in "Read Me — Registration."
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Dennis C. De Mars
email: demars@netcom.com
email: demars@kagi.com
Fractal Domains Web Site: http://members.aol.com/ddemars/fracppc.html
