Mary, I am new to the Fractint list also - although I wrote a lot of programs to create fractals back when the graphics adapters commonly had a resolution of 320 x 200 with 16 colors! I am enjoying getting back to creating fractal images using Fractint. I liked your picture in the M-set very much. It has a nice Julia set-like quality to it. I especially liked your color map. It is very sophisticated - despite its apparent simplicity. How did you make it? One unusual aspect of your image and color map is that the mostly red outside edge of the 'island' of your image is adjacent to a blue surrounding field. Due to the fact that the eye focuses different colors at different depths in the eye, the 'island' in your image appears to hover 'above' (closer to your eye) than the blue surround. You have created a truly three dimensional image - as far as the eye is concerned! (This effect is enhanced somewhat if the room you view the image in is darkened and direct your gaze to the boundary between the red and blue. When the effect appears I can then refocus my attention to the entire island and it will remain hovering above the blue 'background'. ) Did you construct your color map in order to create this effect? Please let me know whether you are able to see this effect. Would others who create your image please let me know whether they can see this as well? Thanks I zoomed into the center of your image on the miniature mandelbrot set located there (Jim Muth calls this a 'Midget') and created another image using your color map. The file to create it follows. The image takes about 3-4 hours on a P400 using the 1024 x 768 x 256 disk video mode. (My Windows 98 machine actually uses Expanded Memory instead of the disk.) I increased the maxiter to 10,000 to insure an accurate coastline to the mini-brot. I don't believe that the high maxiter is the cause of the long creation time. I believe it is because in most of the image the actual number of iterations it takes to color the pixel is large. Also, periodicity testing inside the 'lake' of the M-set should keep the number of iterations from reaching 10,000 there. [Can anyone confirm those two conjectures?] The 'island' in my image resembles a starfish with eight arms. Just within it is the outline of another 'starfish' with 16 arms. Within it is one with 32 arms, etc. I can just begin to make out some of the arms of the starfish with 256 arms with the image rendered at 1024 x 768. I don't recall being able to see a period doubling of that high an order before - and I look every time I see this doubling in a minibrot. I believe that Guy's expression in his message to you: "...a more performant version of FractInt..." means that it will create images more quickly. :-) - Hal Lane USA mandelischia_midg{ ; Zoomed into the center of mandelischia_coli.par ; Orig par by Mary Benkers NL, midget by Hal Lane USA ; Fractint Version 2002 Patchlevel 3 (20.02.3) reset=1910 type=mandel passes=1 center-mag=-1.8605739577363196/-9.3407056855e-7/8.742819e+012 params=0/0 float=y maxiter=10000 inside=0 distest=1/71/1024/768 sound=off colors=000uux<2>xxyzzzyyz<42>GJeFIeEHdDGdBEc<25>BCOBBOBBN<2>BBLAAKCDK<8>\ YcF_fFaiE<3>kuC<9>OSHMPIKMI<3>AAK<9>f48i36m35<3>z00<9>zbbzffzjj<2>zvvzzz\ xvw<6>mRbkN_jIX<3>c0K<5>l8Hm9GoAFpBErDE<3>xIBzKAzMB<8>zjMzlOzoP<3>zzU<9>\ TVYQSZNPZ<3>9C`ADaBEc<42>ttw }

Hello,

I am new on the list. My name is Mary and I am from the Netherlands. I hope you do like my picture. It is somewhere on the Mandelbrot set. It takes 6 min on my computer (P200) to make it.

Mary Benkers

mandelischia_coli { ; some strange bacteria? reset=1910 type=mandel passes=1 corners=-1.8605739577489129/-1.860573957723912/-9.3407929358274632e-007/\ -9.340605428307932e-007 params=0/0 float=y maxiter=1500 inside=0 distest=1/71/1280/1024 colors=000uux<2>xxyzzzyyz<45>DGdBEcBEc<29>BBLAAKCDK<14>kuC<15>AAK<15>z00\ <15>zzz<12>e5Oc0Kd1K<12>xIBzKAzMB<14>zzU<15>9C`ADaBEc<42>ttw }