Saving Fractals

hello all

i am novice and cannot save my fractals on the ultra fractal programs. i can't reopen what i can't save.
what does install ultra fractal 5 with default document folders mean? i have no idea. i need to get past this. thank you all for your help in advance. purchased ultra fractals from apple app store 4 days ago.

ali

If I'm right, install with default document folders means your fractals will be saved in My Documents > Ultra Fractal. You can check the actual location by opening the Options dialog from the Options menu... have a look at the tab labelled "Folders". This will tell you where your files will be saved. I suggest you keep everything where it is for now until you become more familiar with the program.

It will help you to understand that there are two types of file you can save to;

fractal files which are larger files with a .ufr extension containing all the calculated pixels of your image, and

parameter files with a .upr extension. These are made up of smaller blocks of seemingly 'nonsense' text that describe to UF how to reproduce your image on screen. These text-like parameters for an image are much smaller and is what you will see on this forum and elsewhere when users share images for others to experiment and work on (we call this 'tweaking' and it's great fun as well as a good way to learn how to use UF!).
You can store a lot of different parameters (images) in a single .upr file.

For more information on saving and file types do read the comprehensive online Help file. Look up "Saving fractals" and familiarise yourself with fractal files, parameter files and how to use UF's internal "browser" to name, save and open your images.

Hope this helps!

PS. Edited to say that I've just realised you appear to be an Apple user rather than a Windows user. Your folder locations may vary from what I suggested, sorry about that! Do check your Options dialog, though, as this will hopefully show you where you will be saving to!

On a Mac you will also find your Ultra fractal5 in your "documents" folder.

If you purchased via the Mac App Store, your files will be stored by default in your personal Library folder. Apple's guidelines are that App Store apps may not create files in the Documents folder unless asked to, and UF needs to create a standard file structure with e.g. fractal formulas when it starts for the first time, so that's why the Library folder is used instead.

Unfortunately, OS X hides the Library folder by default, so you can only access those files from the Browser inside UF. Click File > Browse and make sure the Library Only button in the toolbar is active. See here for more info:
http://www.ultrafractal.com/help/browsers/browsers.html

There are two options to get a more workable setup:

• You can unhide the Library folder. To do this, open Terminal and type chflags nohidden ~/Library.
• You can change the locations of all folders in UF. To do this, click Preferences on the Ultra Fractal menu. Note that all folders start with the Library folder, e.g. the Formulas folder will be /Users/<your name>/Library/Application Support/Ultra Fractal 5/Formulas. Simply change this to /Users/<your name>/Documents/Ultra Fractal 5/Formulas and repeat for all other folders that you see (basically replacing Library/Application Support with Documents). Then quit and restart UF. It should offer to recreate the default file structure and you should be good to go. Note though that everything you've saved will still be at the old location, you'd have to move that manually.

Hope this helps! I'm sorry things have to be so complicated but it's really Apple's fault.