Masha du Toit

So I’m sitting at home with a cold.  In the break between reading Deon Meyer’s far too intense thriller “13 Uur”,  I’ve been taking my pattern obsession to a new level:

Subblue’s Fractal Explorer plug-in lets me take snippets of my own drawings and turn them into fractals.  I got the link from this post on  feuilleton.

Starting with this seed image copied from my Dragon Girl drawing:

I created these fractal versions:

These were created with the Orbit Trapping plugin – which is the one that lets you create fractals from your own images.

Apparently you can animate all properties of these fractals in After Effects. That’s a little bit scary.

Instructions for installation:

There are two ways you can approach this.  All the downloads mentioned here are free.

1. No Photoshop method: You can run the stand alone version of  Pixel Bender (called the “toolkit“) and access the Fractal Explorer plug-ins from the Pixel Bender Toolkit – in which case, you don’t need Photoshop.
2. With Photoshop: Or you can access a plug-in version of Pixel Bender from inside Photoshop (it appears as a filter) and then access the Fractal Explorer plug-ins as an option in the Pixel Bender filters.

No Photoshop Method – the Toolkit:

• You need to download the Pixel Bender Toolkit – about 33 MB file
• Also download Subblue’s Fractal Explorer filters
• Install the Pixel Bender Toolkit by clicking on the setup.exe file in the .zip file you downloaded.  You can find more instruction on doing this at this page.
• Unzip the Fractal Explorer file you downloaded – you should see two .pbk files.
• Copy and paste the .pbk files in the Pixel Bender Toolkit’s “pixel bender files” folder.  On my computer, I found this at : Program Files\ Adobe\Adobe Utilities\Pixel Bender Toolkit.

You are all set to use the stand alone Pixel Bender Toolkit with the Fractal Explorer plug-ins.

Photoshop Method – the Plugin

• You need to download the Pixel Bender Plugin– find the right version for your system on this page – about 21 MB file
• Also download  Subblue’s Fractal Explorer filters .
• The Pixel Bender Plugin is a .mxp file.  Open it with Adobe Extension Manager CS4 to install it.  You can find more instructions on how to do this at this page.
• Unzip the Fractal Explorer file you downloaded – you should see two .pbk files.
• Copy and paste the .pbk files in the Pixel Bender Plugin’s “pixel bender files” folder.  On my computer, I found it at Program files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS4\pixel bender files.
• Open Photoshop and go to the Filters Menu.  You should see “pixel bender” in the list.  Select it.
• You will find both Fractal Explorer options in the drop down menu of the Pixel Bender filter.

You can download Fractal Explorer .pdf manual here.

Its easier than it sounds.  And quite addictive.