The fractal sites listed on this page will lead you to dazzling images and mind boggling information about chaos and fractals. Even if you didn’t find my site too entertaining, do yourself a favor and check out some of the sites listed below!
Galleries
Infinite Fractal Loop — Index
I already have a link to the Infinite Fractal Loop on my gallery page, but I want to put an extra plug in for the graphical index that was recently added for the Infinite Fractal Loop. The fractal gallery sites that are members of the loop are all of high quality, and this page has a representative thumbnail for practically every site in the loop. Takes a while for this page to load, but it’s worth it! This is the single best starting point I know of for exploring fractal galleries on the Web — an unparalleled portal to the world of fractal images.
Fractalus (Damien M. Jones)
Some of these fractals are really spectacular. Various formulas and coloring schemes are used. This is one of the first sites I’ve seen (besides my own) where anti-aliasing is was regularly used even on the large images. (Anti-aliasing is common at most of the best online galleries now.)
Gumbycat’s Cyberhome
Gumbycat is the nom de plume of Linda Allison. Her talent continues to grow and amaze. She started out using Fractint, getting incredible shading effects from Fractint’s limited color palette. Later she switched to Ultrafractal (a big favorite among PC fractal enthusiasts.)
The Gumbycat gallery is primarily housed at the Fractalus site. You’ll find striking fractal images plus a good link page for beginners. For those who are still interested in Fractint there is hard-to-come-by information, including helpful tips on choosing color maps for fractals in Fractint. A unique site in offering how-to tips for fractal fans. A really excellent resource for Fractint users, but anyone who is interested in fractal coloring techniques can learn something. Updated frequently.
Sprott’s Fractal Gallery
See the Fractal of the Day (generated automatically with algorithms Sprott designed for detecting fractals that might be “esthetically pleasing”) as well as samples of practically every interesting kind of fractal, along with links to many more. A ton of fractal images are archived here. Good for hours of browsing fun.
Kerry Mitchell, Computer Artist
Relatively few images compared to some of the other galleries, but the images here are very original. Excellent color map design!
Lifesmith Classic Fractals
A commercial site containing an enormous number of thumbnail images of fractals. There are preprocessed images of fractals mapped as textures into digitally generated scenes as well as many images of unprocessed fractal images. As the title implies, this is a rich source of classic fractal images using traditional iteration count methods. If you’ve forgotten how striking such images can be, take a look at some of these.
Fractal Information
Fractal Art FAQ
Frequently asked questions list on the subject of fractal art. Excellent source of information on fractal art and fractals in general. If you are a neophyte in fractal matters, this would be a good place to start learning.
The Chaos Hypertextbook
One of many fractal tutorial sites available on the Web. This one is maintained by Glenn Elert. The tutorial material is pretty good (you should have some mathematical background, though) but I mainly include this site because the “Software Resources” appendix contains the most incredibly complete list of Mac OS chaos and fractal programs I’ve ever seen! Every Mac fractal program I’ve ever heard of is listed here, plus many I haven’t, and it’s all organized with capsule reviews. Very well done.
Fractal Links
The largest list of links to fractal software that I know of. I don’t think a totally complete list exists anywhere but if you are looking for non-Mac fractal software you should start here. (For Mac software the Chaos Hypertextbook link listed above has a more complete list.)
The Spanky Fractal Database
This site used to be the most exhaustive directory to fractal-related Internet resources, but it doesn’t seem to get updated much anymore. It is still worth visiting for the content and links it contains. It features libraries of images, fractal programs for all platforms, and fractal-related documents, and even better, a lot of links to other sites that feature more of the same. [This link is a mirror of the original that was at spanky.triumf.ca, which seems to no longer be there.]
Clifford A. Pickover’s Home Page
The one and only, the mind boggling, indefatigable Clifford Pickover! There’s a nice selection of links to computer graphic images. Not that many are specifically fractal, but worth looking at, and actually this whole thing is kind of an ad for Clifford Pickover. If you’re interested in fractals or computer graphics in general, you’ve probably seen or read one of Pickover’s books, and you’ll probably find this page of interest also. If you are interested in recreational mathematics, or even just weirdness in general, take a look at this site. Clifford Pickover isn’t just a web site anymore, he’s a portal!
Other Sites of Interest
Great Math Programs
Xah Lee’s page presents a pretty good list of math-related programs (commercial, shareware and freeware) for the Macintosh and other systems. Anyone interested in fractals would probably be interested in some of the other items listed here; I discovered a few that I didn’t know about myself.