Fractal Forge menus

File

OPEN FILE
You can see a list of all the fractals saved, select one of them and open the file. Fractal Forge comes with several fractal files containing the image and its parameters. You can also open old True Mandel files.

SAVE FILE
You can save the parameters only. The parameters file is 1023 bytes in size.

SAVE IMAGE
You can save the image only, and open it later with other programs to print and adjust it. Now Fractal Forge supports PNG and BMP formats. BMP image size can be pre-calculated, by multiplying width by height by 3 (w x h x 3 - because it's 3 bytes for each pixel). So a 640 x 480 image occupies 921 600 bytes on disk. PNGs are a lot of smaller because they are compressed, so I strongly recommend the use of PNG format instead. PNG format allows the insertion of some additional information as author, title and description. You can see them with a PNG editor (Paint Shop Pro, for example). JPG files are further compressed and you may notice some loss of quality.

SAVE TO DESKTOP
Save images to the Windows directory and choose it as desktop background. If you have select Active Desktop you must disabled it to see the image.

ADD LIST
You can open a file containing a list of fractals. The corresponding fractals will be added to the HISTORY LIST. You can import a single file too (useful to read parameters without drawing the image), for example, to check the execution time.

SAVE LIST
You can save your current history list.

PRINTER SETUP
Standard Windows printer setup dialog box.

PRINT
Prints the current image together with its main parameter values.

EXIT
Exits the program.

Edit

PREVIOUS FRACTAL
Redraws the previous fractal.

COPY IMAGE
Copies the image to the clipboard.

COPY VALUES
Copies parameters to the clipboard as text.

Fractal

START
Starts drawing.

PAUSE
Suspends drawing. Click again to resume drawing.

Image (same as right-clicking the image)

ZOOM IN
To select a rectangular area of the fractal and enlarge it from its center.

ZOOM OUT
To reduce the fractal appearing on display by 4 times (or more if you drag the cursor).

FREE ZOOM
To select a rectangular area and customize it by dragging the corners or moving the borders (cancel it by clicking out).

SHOW ORBITS
Shows the escape path (orbit) of current pixel in a floating window.

SHOW GRIDS
Shows the position at a given iteration of 25 near pixels in a floating window.

SHOW JULIA
Shows a preview of the Julia set corresponding to the cursor position in the Mandelbrot set.

COPY COORDINATES
This must be selected from the right mouse click. It copies the coordinates to the clipboard.

AREA
Shows statistical data of the current image.

Filter

Various filters made by current image values.

Options

FULL SCREEN MODE
Enter or leave full screen mode. In FULL SCREEN MODE the menu and control panel become visible when the mouse is near the top or to the right border of the screen, respectively.

SHOW CONTROL PANEL
Shows or hides the PARAMETERS panel.

SAVE FILE IN 8.3 FORMAT
Saves the file in old DOS format by default.

RESTORE OLD VALUES
You can select a fractal from the drop down list of LIST and restore it on your display.

DEFAULT VALUES
Restores the default fractal.

SELECT STARTING VALUES
Lets you choose a starting image.

EDIT COLORS
Lets you create new color sequence or edit the existing ones.

TEST FLOATING POINT SPEED
How fast is my computer? My old Pentium 100 marks 2,863,000 iterations per second (16-bit version was 2.336.000). Now, my Celeron 450 marks 11,268,731. Every iteration makes 6 floating-point additions and 3 floating-point multiplication.

Tools

POSTER COMPOSITOR
Enables you to save the current image in a tiled set of small images for huge pictures.

Animator

Creates an animated sequence of pictures.