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Thoughts on Palettes -Robert Bunney Under Construction There are over 13,000 palettes in this collection, so I thought
I might suggest what kinds of palettes to look for, how many palettes to collect
and how these palettes might be organized. One caveat: these thoughts
are my personal opinions formed from using Fractal Explorer for several years.
Other FE users and artists may do things differently. How many palettes In my opinion, you cannot have too many palettes, but you don’t want too many palettes in your 'default' or 'primary' location. The palette browser remembers the last directory used, so I always finish with the palette browser in the same directory, which I think of as my default directory. When the palette dialog is brought up, the palette browser loads the list of all the palettes in the last directory used. The longer it takes to load this list of files, the longer it will take for the palette dialog to fully come up. My patience for this dialog coming up is around one second. The number of palette files I can have in my default or primary directory and still have the dialog appear in under a second varies by machine. On my old, slow laptop, the number is around 500. On my newest machine the number is in the thousands. It is best to keep non-palette files out of your default/primary directory to speed up the load of the palette dialog. Organizing palettes I know some artists organized their palettes by category, but in general I find random organization of the palettes in the default or primary directory is a better solution. I never know what a palette will bring out, and am constantly surprised by what palettes work with specific fractal settings. Sometimes a powerful image appears when I apply a random palette that I would not have rationally selected. The palette browser lists the palette files by file name, so to create a random collection, randomize the file names. At times, I’ve gone so far as to randomize the file names of the palette files in my default/primary directory. There are a couple exceptions to my random organization. I keep a few 'special' palettes where I can find them. Palettes named with a leading zero (000.frp for example), will appear at the front of the list. Palettes named with a leading ‘z’ will appear at the end of the palette list. If I want to keep a palette handy, I will name them with a leading zero or ‘z.’ Palette Types Don't overlook simple UF palettes There are a lot of flashy and complex palettes in the collection.
The are also many simple palettes. It is easy to overlook the simple palettes, but
I find in general simple palettes are successful more often than complex palettes.
Also the colors in the final image are not restricted to colors displayed in the
palette (for whatever reason). 
But when I apply this simple palette I have this multi-hued image:  The colors in the original palette don't appear in the final image. Dramatics change from the palette colors to image colors is one reason I like to apply a wide variety of palettes at random. Shape Matters Pay attention to the shape of the slope on a UF gradient palette. I call this shape a 'slope' and it will often produce different results than the 'hill' palette above:  In general I find slope palettes produce better, more 3-D looking forms and hill palettes have smoother shapes.
Same palette, different complexity If you see the same UF gradient, don't automatically assume that you already have that palette in your collection. There are a few controls that manage what I think of as complexity. In the palette dialog the main ones are transformation and density:  For example, transformations settings of ArcTan and Log(cube power) will simplify an image Transformation settings of Square Power will bring out detail. Often when I find a palette that works well, I'll save it with a couple of different transformations. Finding the right transformation is often the key to unlocking a beautiful image.
Noisy palettes There are many UF-type palettes in this collection that have a large number of points...255 in some cases. These palettes are nearly impossible to edit, are slow to load, and are infrequently my palette of choice. But when these palettes work, they can produce images with the look and feel of metal, glass, or organic material. I keep a few of these palettes at the end of my collection and a much larger set in a subdirectory.  Reflected color This concept is one I've only run across recently (while learning another fractal program). I've only made baby steps in this area, but the idea is interesting enough for me to include here. When light bounces off an object and hits another, the color of the light takes on the color of the object. Painters use this idea in tinting shadows and reflections of objects near each other. We can emulate this idea a bit by including some of an adjacent color in the "shadow" of another color. When it works, the 'forms' in the fractal feels more 'real.' Take a look at this piece of a UF palette:  See how there is gold in the 'shadow' of the white. There are a few palettes in this collection with this kind of 'reflected light.' Color Theory I've found my reading on color theory helpful in constructing and selecting palettes. There are a number of resources on the net on color theory. Here are two to get you started: Whole college level courses are taught on color theory, so I still have a lot to learn in this area. I've found this book particuarily helpful and approachable on the subject: Exploring Color by Nita Leland. |