Fractal Art Studio Directions
Fractal Explorer Part One
Use this tool to create fractal are. Choose from 22 fractal types, cut out shapes, send them to a canvas and then personalize with your own art.
Table of Contents
Picking a fractal
Click any tab along the top to pick your fractal; Mandelbrot, Julia Set, Burning Ship, Newton, the L-system plants, IFS, noise types, DLA, Romanesco.
A control panel will appears in the top right. You can adjest the sliders select fractal properties. Each fractal has different option depending on what makes sense for that type.
Zooming and panning
Scroll to zoom in or out, the zoom centers on your cursor.
Click and drag to pan around.
On touch devices, pinch to zoom. Zoom and pan only work on the escape-time fractals: Mandelbrot, Julia Set, Burning Ship, and Newton.
Hit Reset View in the panel to return to the default. L-systems, IFS, and noise types re-render centered automatically.
Using the Cutout tool
Click the Cutout tab in the tab bar. A yellow toolbar appears on the left side of the canvas. Pick a shape tool; rectangle, ellipse, triangle, diamond, star, hexagon, polygon, or freehand.
Draw your selection on the fractal. For most shapes, click and drag.
For polygon, click to place vertices and double-click to close it (or click near the first point).
For freehand, just draw freely.
Hold Shift while dragging to change proportion, rectangles becomes a squares, ellipses becomes a circles.
Use the Feather slider to soften the cutout edges and click Add Piece when you’re happy with your final selection.
A preview appears so you can download it immediately, or just close it, your piece is already saved in the tray at the bottom of the toolbar.
Keyboard shortcuts for shape tools: R for rectangle, E for ellipse, T for triangle, D for diamond, S for star, H for hexagon, P for polygon, F for freehand.
Press Escape to cancel a selection. Press Enter to confirm one.
Stamp mode
If you want, ffter drawing a selection shape, click Stamp in the toolbar. Your shape becomes a repeating stamp.
Click anywhere on the fractal to cut that shape from wherever you click — each click adds a new piece to the tray.
Click Stamp again or draw a new selection to exit stamp mode.
Importing your own images
Click the PNG button in the cutout toolbar to import any PNG, WEBP, or GIF file into the pieces tray alongside your cutouts.
Passing pieces to the Composer
Pieces in the tray automatically transfer to the Fractal Composer when that tool loads on the same page.
You can also click any tray item to download it directly.
FRACTAL COMPOSER Part 2
Arrange fractal pieces into your composition, paint or draw over them, and export.
Getting pieces onto the canvas
If you cut pieces in the Fractal Explorer, they transfer automatically when the Composer loads and appear on the canvas ready to arrange.
To bring in external images, click Import PNG in the header bar.
You can select multiple files at once.
Selecting and moving pieces
The Select tool is active by default.
Click any piece to select it, then drag it wherever you want. Hold Shift and click to select multiple pieces and drag them as a group.
Ctrl A selects everything. Escape deselects.
Adjusting a piece
Select a piece and use the controls in the right panel to change its rotation, scale, and opacity and use flip H and Flip V to mirror the piece horizontally or vertically.
Duplicate copies a piece so you can reuse it in the composition.
The Delete button removes the selected piece, as does the Delete key on your keyboard.
The layer order follows the pieces list in the right panel, later pieces sit on top.
Clicking a piece to drag it automatically brings it to the front.
Drawing on top
Pick a draw tool from the left sidebar: Ink Pen, Marker, Watercolor, Pencil, or Eraser. Set your color, brush size, and flow opacity in the header bar.
The rainbow button opens a custom color picker.
Symmetry options (2x, 4x, 6x, 8x, 12x) mirror your strokes around the canvas center, which is useful for mandalas and radial designs.
The undo button in the sidebar undoes the last stroke. The trash icon clears all drawing marks but keeps your pieces intact.
Drawing lives on a separate layer above the pieces and exports with everything else.
Canvas settings
Use the preset size buttons in the right panel to resize the canvas — 1200×800, 800×1000, 1000×1000, or 1600×900.
Pick a background color from the grid, use the color input for a custom hex value, or choose one of the gradient presets: Cosmos, Aurora, Sunset, or Rainbow.
Turn on snap to grid and set the grid size if you want pieces to align precisely.
Exporting
Export PNG downloads the full composition with background included.
Transparent exports the same image with the background removed, useful if you want to layer the result over something else in another program.
Save project in the sidebar saves a JSON file you can reload later with Load project.
This preserves all piece positions, rotation and scale settings, opacity, and drawing marks.