I have noticed that some fractals that are otherwise beautiful are quite grainy. Are there any ways to get around this and make the picture seem to "flow" better?

you can slightly adjust the gamma.. but be very careful with it as you can lose details... or do a light despeckle.. but again be careful with it..... but i dont use these very often, most of the time if you move a triangle it will make the image clearer you just have to find which triangle to move..

You can also increase the contrast but don't do that too much because you can damage the image by losing detail. Also a little increase in saturation can bring the colors out more.

You can increase the number of strips and the image quality when exporting if you are prepared to wait a couple of hours. I render my images at night and let it run while I'm asleep.

neat image reduces grain in a pic and does produce some weird but interesting changes to fractals .

how do I do a light despeckle, or increase the image quality when exporting, or use "neat image"? Sorry I am relatively new to this.

Neat Image is a program. Increasing image quality when exporting is, I imagine, simply a case of selecting the appropriate options when exporting your flame (on the 'export flame' screen). As for 'despeckle', it does what it says on the can - most decent image editing programs will have a despeckle filter.

When you choose "export flame" from the Aphophysis file menu, image quality is one of the options. I have mine set to 1000. I usually use 2 or 3 strips and set oversample to 1, but I think increasing oversample will also increase quality. It wil just take twice as long to render if you set it to 2.

well your best bet is to simply render the fractal at a higher quality like emily said.. if your computer is very capable, i would try rendering at around 2000 quality, .4 filter radius, and at least 2 oversample.. that would greatly increase the quality of the fractal and eliminate the need for a lot of fixing up... if your computer isn't too good then try 1000 quality and 2 oversample (at 1600x1200 of course). if you render it and think it needs a little fixing, then just follow the previous posts and you should be all set.

Make sure you don't want to make any changes to it first though. I wouldn't bother spending alot of time on a render unless you are really happy with it, maybe try posting it first to see if anyone has suggestions for improvement (except on the quality side naturally). If people don't really like it you might deicde it isn't worth going to the effort of waiting 1/2 an hour or longer for a high quality rendering.

Sometimes it's worth waiting hours to render a fractal.. whenever i used apophysis, i would get flames i liked, save them, and have it render one every night when i went to bed. Even a boring fractal rendered in high quality still would grab my attention over a bright colorful one that is all grainy.

There is a gargantuan thread in this forum that covers every excrutiating detail about techniques used to make apophysis render quality images smoothly. I don't have the direct link to it on hand, but I would browse this forum for that.

I found this with the newly re-activated discussion search: Apophysis Tutorial. =D

I also have an odd problem. Either my eyesight is getting really bad (I do wear glasses, but I've noticed no serious problems lately), or my monitor sucks. (I have an HP laptop.) My monitor is set to 1024 x 768 at 32-bit color.

Anyway, I don't notice grain so much unless there's a ton of it there and the picture looks really crappy. If I change the resolution, all that happens is that my icons get tinier and I have to squint to read the font on the screen. Is there a better way to adjust the monitor to see the details? Or is it just me? Am I hallucinating? Is life just a dream? What is the ultimate answer? (Okay, we all know that one is 42.)

Emily , what model hp laptop do you have ? and have you tried to download updated Video drivers from HP's website ? or if your running Windows XP try MicroSofts update page. Now don't get upset have you tried cleaning your monitor with rubbing alcohol ? Some times the monitor get pressed against the keyboard and picks up oils that your fingers leave behind. let me know how this works
Gary

also Whats 42 ?

42 is the Ultimate Answer from Hitchhiker's Guide.

:-)))

and .... not only is emily proving that she is well read .. hopefully she'll prove wise enough NOT to clean her screen with rubbing alcohol

removes the anti-glare coating from the glass

If you thought she was cranky before .. just wait till everything behind her competes for her attention in front of her