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That's really nice indeed. I understand those are compositions of multiple fractals plus regular images for the ships?

yes..dis is what can n should be done wit fractal software
thanks fer da public service inna linkin dis great fractal artist cK.
excellent work n breath takin beautiful digital visual
powerful n potent vision

Thanks to Christian for opening this thread!
Well regarding my works, they are done 100% with fractals, absolutely no use of imported, painted or so images! Using an image, even an imported texture would kill the meaning of a fractal for me. Also as some fractals are used for various competitions or designs for different clothes sometimes, they could be needed in a very high resolutions like 23,000px sometimes, or say making 2 versions of a fractal - rectangular and square. I could not count on using images, all has to be resolution independent and flexible to be rearranged quickly for the needs. The unique thing I permit myself is sometimes to change a blend mode of a fractal layer with some of the PhotoShop blending modes for example to change "screen" mode to "color dodge" if I think this will make the picture more expressive. Sure as there are some differences  between raw preview in UF and final antialiased render, the transparency of some layers is often adjusted also.
I don't use many layers, especially in my recent works. 75 is the most ever used quantity of layers by me but for old fractal. All recent fractals, use between 20 and 30 layers. I use many masks, 7-9 sometimes for specific layer, but I think this is normal.
Ships are very easy to make for me, practically I could make a ship even from a simple Mandelbrot. Sure I have some more artistic formulas for this

Amazing art work man. Wow.

I know what you mean. Apophysis could use many improvements. It needs proper multi-core support and more efficient rendering. It also needs an option to create an images during the render process. The main program is still not 64 bit. And a couple things more. The lack of control is because there are no layers in apophysis. A recent (or not that recent anymore) addition to the program, Xaos, makes layer-like things possible, but it's not actually layers. I actually like that about apophysis, because everything is really a raw fractal.
Because I've used apophysis for a couple of years I know my way around the program, while in ultra fractal I wouldn't know where to start right now.