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Do you do it? If so to what extent?  Is it wrong.. on how many levels? lol

I guess this post is inspired by your comment on my image http://www.fractalforums.com/index.php?action=gallery;sa=view;id=2530 isn' it?

I only use Ultrafractal. The only postprocessing I do sometimes is balance the color, luminance and contrast for the picture as a whole.

I don't think anything is wrong. A digital artist can use as many tools as he wants. Nothing bad...

It all depends on purpose, i guess... I you make a mathematical presentation on the structure of fractals, i think it would be a bad idea ;D
In all other cases, why not? It's just another tool to express yourself.
In crafting there's rules, in art there's freedom.

NOPE!  I have been thinking about this topic for a while now.  Ohh but you have inspired me in other ways.  :embarrass:

I think that with too much editing, it stops being a fractal and starts being a graphic composition using fractals as a tool or component.  It's difficult to say where that line is, but I appreciate fractals largely as scientific things that are beautiful, so I personally don't care for too much editing.  I'm not a fan of fractal images that have a bunch of layers and are highly edited.  I'm the same with my photography.  A little color or contrast adjustment overall is fine, but I like to see (or show) the intrinsic beauty in things and not fabricate beauty by after the fact editing.

Pretty much agree with all you say.  I also do photography.  The only thing I would add is that I do play with turning a photo into abstract art; but that's a totally diffirent thing.  I pretty much have thought that your fractal should "stand on it's own"  I only thought about this when talking about the spring coontest Trifox mentioned that entries could be edited.

I have done it on occasions, but not very often.  And when I do modify a rendering, most times it is very little.

In my opinion, Right and Wrong are subjective, and therefore the levels are of your own making.

There are many discussions concerning post processing of fractal images, some may be found within these boards:
   http://www.fractalforums.com/index.php?topic=686.0
   http://www.fractalforums.com/index.php?topic=2361.0
   etc...
 

Thanks Nahee for links & added discussions. :dink:  I think it's wrong when the finished product looks nothing like original fractal.  That would definately be too much editing.. (yes I know a very simplistic answer) :embarrass:

I do it on most of my work. I think its part of what makes it art.

Most anything may be called "art", but not everything should be called "fractal art" !!!

I have nothing against modifying rendered fractal images to produce what a person wishes to attempt.  But they should only call it "art using fractals", or mixed media using fractals.
 

I agree that if changing pixels around, or adding stuffs to an image, it "crosses some sort of line" - but if merely adjusting color contrast, levels, or saturation - I have no issues saying it's still "Fractal Art"

Deleting noisy areas outside areas of interest in a 3D fractal gets into a grey area too - but I'd personally still allow it the title of "Fractal Art" regardless.

It's very difficult to draw an exact line and say "crossing" it causes too much of a change to still be called "Fractal Art"

Let me see if I understand correctly... If I create a menger sponge with a cloudy background in M3D it is called "Fractal Art", but if I render a menger sponge in M3D and add the cloudy background in PS or GIMP, I must call it "mixed media"? Hmm... Interesting...

Just to be Absolutely Clear - YOU can call it whatever you want!!

It's what other people would have you call it that is being discussed.  There is certainly no consensus of opinion on this subject   :police:

There are fractal rendering applications that allow one to use photographs and non-fractal images as input, as either backgrounds or part of the rendered fractal.  And some of these applications allow different kinds of filtering and layering of rendered fractals.  Plus other types of processes may be incorporated that may not be truly fractal.  But the outcome is what many people would call a work of "art" (depending on the viewer and their definition of "art").  All I am saying is that these are "art using fractals", and not really "fractal art".  That is my opinion, and the opinion of many others that I know.  This particular topic has been discussed for many years now, and there does not seem to be any real conclusion to it (nor probably ever be one).

Whether everything is done within a single application, or it is done with several applications and methods, is not the issue.  What is the issue is what has been done to the original "fractal" that was rendered with a specific formula process.  If two different fractal formulas are used and the two images are then layered together, you are not seeing a single "fractal art", but a combination of two "fractal art" images, making it a "mixed" image using fractals.
 

And you know I will Sock  :dink:


Ok, Nahee, now I know what you don't consider "Fractal Art". Apparently both my examples are a form of "art using Fractals". I like to know what you DO consider Fractal Art. According to your definition, I would suppose that Fractal Art would be purely mathematical, based on a single iterative formula, and should be composed of only two colors for the odd and even iterations. Any addition in coloring would surely be "art using fractals" because it is not strictly necessary to define the form of the fractal.

And then again, I might of course be totally wrong...

Edit: After writing this post, I stumbled upon this post http://orbittrap.ca/?p=5154 (http://orbittrap.ca/?p=5154). Puts this discussion in an interesting perspective...

I am old school when it comes to fractals.  I have been involved with them for decades now, long before the "kids" now days took an interest, and even before a lot of them were born.  So I tend toward the original meaning of "fractal art".  It is pretty much as you have "supposed" above, but I do not limit the colors to just two values, because that is just a "map" used for assigning a value after a calculated number has been reached for that particular point on/within the plane.  It does not have to be "odd or even", because it can fall within a scale.

And Tim Hodkinson's posting on Orbit Trap (http://www.orbittrap.ca/) kind of explains what has happened over the many years to alter what people think of as "fractal art".  Now days, it has come to the point where anything within an image that looks or has anything to do with fractals ends up causing that image to be called "fractal art".  Just because a photograph of a fern frond shows the fractal design of the plant does not necessarily make it "fractal art", even if it is an artistic art image that has to do with something fractal.
 

"Art Using Fractals" is too long to say.

I hereby propose calling all this fancified stuff with obj file export, layering, masking, post-work, filters, and even etc "Fractal Art" and the "Pure" stuff can simply be called "Fractals".

Let's face it, if it's more than 2 words there is no way it will catch on and stick in today's culture.

So I say us blasphemers just steal the phrase "Fractal Art" and let the pure things have the simpler, and Purer term - Fractals.   :jabbering:

The scary part about that idea is I have no idea if I am being sarcastic or not!   O0

In today's society, with social networking, texting, and everything else taking place on small "smart" phones, you might as well say that anything with more than two syllables is too long.     :fiery:

Besides, there has already been a two word definition for "art using fractals", it is called "digital art" !!!!     :evil1:

As to anything longer than two words being too much for today's culture to accept, that is not true.  There are many people, groups, companies, objects, and what have you, that are three or more words long, and are quite popular.  Take for example musical groups:
Fall Out Boy
Haste the Day
Axe Murder Boyz
Three Doors Down
Ben Folds Five
Jimmy Eat World
My Chemical Romance
Grand Funk Railroad
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Bachman Turner Overdrive
New York Dolls
Electric Light Orchestra
Guns and Roses
Men Without Hats
Dexy's Midnight Runners
Wu Tang Clan
Old Dirty Bastard
Fountains of Wayne
Our Daughter's Wedding
Goo Goo Dolls
Soul to Soul
Alice in Chains
Ozark Mountain Daredevils
Gang of Four
Fine Young Cannibals
Vains of Jenna
Loggins and Messina
Simon and Garfunkel
Jan and Dean
Lamb of God
Type O Negative
Lords of Acid
Nine Inch Nails
Corrosion of Conformity
Driving and Crying
Mighty Mighty Bosstones
Reverend Horton Heat
Blue Oyster Cult
Wall of Voodoo
Marshall Tucker Band
Charlie Daniels Band
Hall and Oates
Little River Band
Aly and AJ
Third Eye Blind
2 Live Crew
Dead Can Dance
Black Oak Arkansas
Better than Ezra
Right Said Fred
Three Dog Night
Salt 'n' Peppa
The Beach Boys
Ace of Base
Alan Parsons Project
Black Eyed Peas
Dave Matthews Band
Tower of Power
Back Street Boys
... etc...
 

Yeah, but all that does nothing to enhance the awkward sound of "Art Using Fractals" - it just doesn't have the aesthetic needed to surpass the two word limit of today's youth.

And I don't want Digital Art because the word Fractal HAS to be in there, or at least implied...

How about "F-Art?"

We can pronounce it "Fart" and appeal to our sophomoric senses of humours!

The only problem is deciding which group gets to call itself that, as I'm sure all us Old Farts want F-Art for our side   :-*

I could live with that... But saying that probably qualifies me as one of "us Old Farts"... Oh wait. No. That would be the other side. Or not? Maybe we should iterate this post for a while and see if it escapes to infinity...

P.S: Whatever happened to the serious discussion about what's real Fractal Art when we restarted this topic? I mean, isn't it all about the answer to the ultimate question about life, the universe and fractals?

Oh, OK...

If you want to get back to a serious discussion  (I just thought it ran it's course) - I shall use, and always have used, the term Fractal Art as the Broad and General, all-encompassing, umbrella term for the genre.

All images then fall into their little sub-sets like 3D, 2D, One Formula, Hybrids, Layered, filtered / post-worked, Composited into multi-media, collaged, and all the other variants.

They are All Fractal Art, and the sub-classifications are what we are discussing here.

The issue arises when one sub-class wants the broadest and most general term to to be exclusive to it, when in fact that is unreasonable, given the nature of Set Theory. 

A set cannot be a proper subset of itself.