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Creating Prints of Large Fractals?

Posted by Cliff on from the swirls-and-whirls-and-lots-of-colors dept.

jkoshy asks: "I would like to make very large (10'x10') color fractal images using A4 size printouts that I would be assembling to make up the final picture. Most fractal generation programs that I have seen are designed for on-screen fractal viewing. Are there any programs (or scripts driving fractal generation programs) that can generate large printouts of fractal images?" I can't resist a good fractal poster and would love to be able to produce one on my own, as well. In addition to the poster's question, how difficult is it to get posters made from fractal images? What resolutions are typically required?

15 comments

  1. Does it matter what resolution? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No matter how far away or how close you look, the pattern's going to be the same.

  2. Fractint by zero_offset · · Score: 3, Informative

    It would take some work, but you could use the old Fractint program's "disk video" mode to generate a series of 32767x32767 image files in a tiled layout, then write a simple app to chain them together and print them out.

    Many moons ago in the college daze, my friends all jointly (pun intended) rented a big farm house which featured a giant white garage wall at the end of the long driveway. We'd planned to do use Fractint to create a series of sort of "paint-by-numbers" templates to cover this huge wall.

    Never happened. Too much reggae, beer, sun, etc.

    But still -- check out Fractint. They never got beyond version 20.x under DOS, but it's still one of the more flexible programs available for scripted automation... search for it in Google, there are a couple of dedicated sites out there.

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  3. Postscript and a -real- printer by truesaer · · Score: 3, Insightful
    What I would do is figure out some way to generate a post script file of the image. I assume this can be done in one of these programs, although I can't say I know for sure.


    Then, instead of printing them A4 sized, I would use email or a disk and get it to a geniune printer. You seem to want a strange size, but they might be able to tape together two E size plots of the image (E size is I think 3ft by 4 ft, or whatever a standard architectural blueprint is). It would probably cost $50-80, but considering the cost of inkjet cartriges, this isn't bad.


    Look for a place that does duplication or provides blueprint services. Kinkos will also sometimes have the equipment for this, but be prepared for their horrid pricing.

    1. Re:Postscript and a -real- printer by toast0 · · Score: 1

      i've seen some postscript files that generate the fractal with the printer, a google search will find them

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    2. Re:Postscript and a -real- printer by cs668 · · Score: 2

      My local kinko's has large format color printer that looks like it is about 4' wide. I just had a 26" wide ps file printed there and it looked great.

      If you can get a postscript file of the fractal there are tones of programs out there that will tile the output.

      Since postscript is just a programming language you could actually find the location/formula of the fractal you want by exploring in some quick lowres interactive program and then write a Postscript program to do the same thing calculating what you need for each page. You would then be able to print some huge image with what probably amounts to an 8-10k file.

  4. check the web by jhines · · Score: 1

    most advertising signs are printed by a huge inkjet printer, spraying paint. You can make the picture as large as you want. Not terribly hi-res, but for a billboard, that doesn't matter.

  5. services for large prints by rakerman · · Score: 2, Informative

    I can't help you on the fractal side of things, but once you have the large fractal image, there are many services that can print it, such as
    http://www.BigNose.com/
    See the DPreview printing forum for more information
    http://www.dpreview.com/forums/forum.asp?forum=100 3

  6. Generate them on a PC and project to Z wall. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Have fith graders paint what they see on z wall.

    Z wall, Z wall. - Fantasy Island

  7. Resolution by morcheeba · · Score: 3, Funny

    What resolutions are typically required?

    Infinite. Isn't that the whole point of fractals? ;-)

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    1. Re:resolution by alienmole · · Score: 2

      It's not that big a deal to generate something like this - it just takes time. With fractals, you can generate part of the picture at a time, e.g. one printed page at a time, about 8 million pixels at 300 DPI. Even on a slower machine, just let it churn away in the background whenever you get a chance, and slowly, your 10ft by 10ft poster will come together.

  8. resolution by skotte · · Score: 0
    in all things printed, if we intend to display it or look at it up close at all, use at least 300 DPI. if processing power is a concern, you can probably get by fFor personal use at maybe 150 DPI. since you are wanting 10' x 10', 300 DPI would be 36000 pixels wide by 36000 tall. that's a total of 1,296,000,000 -- one and a third billion pixels total. in view of this, you may want to reconsider your desire of this size. of course, at 100 DPI you are only talking about a 'mere' 432,000,000 pixels.



    so your answer about resolution? depends on how much computing power you have, and how close you expect to look at it.

  9. Been there, done that. by Hew · · Score: 1

    I have b/w A2 printouts having on my wall @1200 dpi, which is roughly 25600 by 19200 pixels.

    Fractint has three features that you can use in conjunction to generate fractal images of this size. 1) Batch video mode, 2) Tiling, and 3) a way to fit the tiles together to a single image.

    To get started, check out the sections "Batch mode" and "Disk-Video Modes" in the fractint help file.

    The homepage of Fractint is http://www.fractint.org/, which unfortunately seems to be down for the moment...

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    /cj
  10. Use CAD by loosenut · · Score: 2

    I play on AutoCAD all day, and I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to adapt some fractal algorithims to AutoCAD Visual Basic. You'd probably be limited in resolution/iterations by the amount of system memory, and you could only use 256 colors, but otherwise it would work.

    Oh, yeah, then there is the pricetag on AutoCAD.

  11. use the poster program to split print into n pages by sanermind · · Score: 1

    It's a great program.

    you can download it here

    I've made some beautifull posters with it. All you need is scissors and tape. It even prints allignment crop marks for you.

    Warning! I have had trouble using it on level 2 PS. Level 1 works fine though.

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  12. Gimp Fractal Explorer by Mandelbrute · · Score: 1
    One possibility is create a really big image in gimp and use the fractal explorer (Filter->Render->Pattern->Fractal Explorer) to get the image you want.


    I gave it a shot here, but gimp on NT chokes with large images. Once you get the image the poster program mentioned above should be great.


    Another option is Xaos, with the options "xaos -render filename -size widthxheight -antialiasing", but you'll have to write a script to get xaos to the point where you want to see some output. I don't know whether it would be easier to use this or fractint, but xaos does give you a few more options.