Paintshop-Pro Tutorial: How to Make Cool Fractals

How to make cool fractals from scratch with some basic steps in Paint Shop Pro. I am using Version 7 but I believe the tools used are standard in almost all versions. Awesome fractal images can be made with just a small imagination! Enjoy! Paint Shop Pro is very similar to Photoshop so you can probably use just about the same steps.
This tutorial has many detailed steps but making the fractal is very fast and easy!

End result:

Author:

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Practice tutorial

Tags:fractals

Step 1

Example 1

Step 2

Example 2

Step 3

Example 3 - used in tutorial

Step 4

Click on File, then New. Pick your desired size. I picked black for the background.

Step 5

Click on Layers and click New Raster Layer.

Step 6

No need to change any settings in the dialog box for the new layer. Just press OK

Step 7

Click on the Shapes tool on the left. You want to make your line width a bit thick. I picked 6. Make sure you do not have "vector" checked. Draw your shape by clicking and dragging.
You can also make your own shape by drawing it in with the paintbrush or even copy and paste an image.

Step 8

You will now want to go to your layer pallette and duplicate that shapes layer. Right click on that layer and click duplicate. You may want to name your layers if you get confused--just right click on it and click on Rename.

Step 9

Click on Image (at the top) and then click Resize.

Step 10

For this, I resized it 75% of the original. Make sure you do not have "resize all layers" checked. Click OK

Step 11

Click on Image (at top) again and click on Rotate.

Step 12

For this, I checked Right and set it to Free at 10 degrees. Make sure "all layers" is not checked.

Step 13

It should now look like this.

Step 14

At this point, use your mover tool on the left and line up the bottom points. You will now go to your layer pallette again and duplicate this resized/rotated layer.

Step 15

You will repeat steps 8 through 13 a few times. You will now go to your Layer Pallette and click on the glasses for the background layer-this makes the layer "invisible".

Step 16

Now you will merge all visible layers by clicking on Layers (at the top), put your cursor over Merge and then click Merge Visible.

Step 17

Go to your layer pallette again and click the glasses for the Background layer again to make it visible once again.

Step 18

You have only two layers again now--the black background and the new shape. You will now go to your layer pallette and click on the shape layer and duplicate it.

Step 19

Now resize this layer. I resized it to 75% of original.

Step 20

Now click on Image (at top) again and rotate it--I did 45 degrees. Then move that again so the bottom points touch the points of the original.

Step 21

Now make the background layer invisible again by clicking the glasses.

Step 22

Again, go to Layers (at top) merge the visible layers.

Step 23

In your layer pallette again, make the background layer visible by clicking the glasses again.

Step 24

At this point, I gave the shape a little pizazz. You can give it many effects, but I used a basic inner bevel. Click on Effects (at top) and then put your cursor over 3D Effects and click on Inner Bevel.

Step 25

In this dialog box, you can mess with the settings to your desire. I used Pillow for the preset and then just tweaked a bit here and there. I also changed the color to pink to make it look neat.

Step 26

Now, duplicate that cool looking layer! This is where the fun can begin.

Step 27

Go to Image (at top) and click on Mirror.

Step 28

You can move that mirrored layer closer to the other if you wish, but I left mine exactly where it was. You will now want to make the background invisible again.

Step 29

Now merge visible layers.

Step 30

Make your background layer visible again.

Step 31

Now duplicate that merged layer again.

Step 32

Go to Image (at top) and click on Flip now.

Step 33

Now move your flipped layer closer to the other. You can just have it touch or you can overlap. I overlapped it some.

Step 34

Now what I did was merge those layers, then duplicated and rotated it 90 degrees. You can keep doing this as many times as you wish to get the desired look. You can keep duplicating and rotating as much as you like- even resize.

Step 35

I duplicated, resized and changed the color and opacity of different layers. Mess around with it and you can come up with awesome things!

1 Comments:

troubadore9 says:

I voted without my comments.This tutorial was easy to follow and the results are fabulous

(3 years and 284 days ago)

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