Color
Basics
Color shapes and molds the way we see our world. It defines textures. This is true in all art and for the fractal artist these features of color allow not only the production of a beautiful image, but one that can also be evocative of the real world.
The dimensional quality of these examples was produced by controling how the color gradients used in UltraFractal were CONSTRUCTED. The variation in texture comes from how the colors are APPLIED. Both images use the same color set.
A gradient is nothing more than a series of colors. It can be a smoothly graded series such as this
Or one with abrupt changes.
Gradients can be constructed to suit a particular purpose or they can be randomly generated by UF. To make a really good fractal image, you need to understand which sort of gradient to select for the purpose you have in mind. You may never need to construct a gradient from scratch if you learn to adapt whats available. Also, adapting is much faster than construction, so you can get on to the fun of creating images without a lot of bother.
Color values for UF and on your monitor
Colors on your monitor are made up of thousands of tiny rectangles called
pixels. The color for each pixel is defined by a combination of red (R),
green (G) and blue (B). The UF gradients also use this system, as well
as hue (H), saturation (S) and light (L). This workshop will discuss colors
in terms of
RGB. R, G and B can have a numeric value from 0 to 255. 0 is the absence
of the color and 255 is the brightest value of the color. The reddest red
possible is 255,0,0 where 255 is for red, 0 is for green and 0 is for blue.
This nomenclature will be followed strictly in this workshop. Look at the
picture of the UF gradient editor and you will see 255,0,0 entered into
the boxes (the control point for the red is highlighted and therefore operational).
You can examine all of the color control points and their values by opening this gradient, called rainbow brights, in UltraFractal. After downloading and unzipping the workshop, put the file "workshop.ugr" into the gradients folder in UF. To see the gradient click "file, open, gradients, workshop, r_brights."
Important color values are:
Bright red 255, 0, 0
Bright green 0, 255, 0
Bright blue 0, 0, 255
Bright yellow 255, 255, 0 (bet you were wondering how to make yellow)
White 255, 255, 255
Black 0, 0, 0
Grey all numbers the same (higher numbers make a paler gray)
Pale colors are made with high values such as 240, 245, 255 (a pale blue-green). Dark colors are made with low values like 15, 10, 5 (a brown). You can either enter the numbers directly into the gradient editor at a control point or you can pull the little boxes up and down. You might want to print out this page for reference because these numeric values will be used for constructing a gradient.
More information on
RGB and your monitor
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Other Topics
Color Basics|Gradients |Black|Merge
Modes|Color Sets|Masking|Coloring
Methods|Links and Miscellaneous