Fractalius: Photoshop plug-in

Fractalius is a trippy image filter for Photoshop. Windows only. The Fabulous Fractalius Pool on Flickr has many more examples.

(via Forgetomori)

[#1 posted by dbarak , December 29, 2008 2:58 PM]

I don't usually get too excited about plug-ins, even those for productivity (I'm faster on my own), but this one looks pretty cool.

[#2 posted by gabrielm , December 29, 2008 2:59 PM]

Great stuff. Sad for no mac love...

[#3 posted by operator99 , December 29, 2008 3:04 PM]

Methinks this will get old fast. The page-curl of 2009.

[#4 posted by doublethink , December 29, 2008 3:04 PM]

I have seen these popping up all over Flickr. I gave it a try but it spat out my image with DEMO watermarks in a grid every few inches.

Bastards, charging money for their products. What has the world come to. Great tool though, very easy to play with and you can make extremely varied results with it.

[#5 posted by dbarak , December 29, 2008 3:19 PM]

@ #3 posted by operator99

What's wrong with the page curl? I use it on everything I do. (Nahhhhh...)

[#6 posted by Church , December 29, 2008 3:21 PM]

"Fractalius plugin creates unusual, eccentric artworks in a single step. The effects are based on extraction of so-called hidden fractal texture of an image."

Um, what?

[#7 posted by nehpetsE , December 29, 2008 3:28 PM]

1:How do certain chemicals seem duplicate this filter in human optical processing?

1&1/2: If we with drugs, we reverse engineer the human brain math/mechanics, Will it come in handy for designing the pattern recognition systems on our robot overlords?

2:When will a true mentat cocktail be developed?

3: Do drugs become less fun when they can be duplicated by maths?

discuss

[#8 posted by BlueKephra , December 29, 2008 4:06 PM]

Hey, I've got some pics in that pool . Like the much debated HDR, you don't have to go for the OTT effect, it's quite capable of much more subtle effects.But I particularly like this one, I like how it makes plants look like they're pulsing with energy....
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpaul23/2620013522/

[#9 posted by dbarak , December 29, 2008 4:11 PM]

It kind of looks like what Kirlian photography would look like if you could do it in 3D.

[#10 posted by artbot , December 29, 2008 4:17 PM]

#3 - More like this (next?) year's HDR/Tilt-shift.

[#11 posted by Naikrovek , December 29, 2008 4:29 PM]

pretty, but not a fractal. fractals look the same independent of how far you're zoomed in or out. at some point this would cease to look like a lion at either extreme, hence, not a fractal.

but, like i said, pretty. too intense to be anything that will last beyond a fad's lifetime, though.

[#12 posted by OM , December 29, 2008 4:39 PM]

"When will a true mentat cocktail be developed?"

...As long as it doesn't stain the lips and tongue like a blue raspberry popsicle :-P

[#13 posted by Blue , December 29, 2008 5:39 PM]

It might be nice, at least for a moment or two, but it's dog slow to render anything (and no hyperthreading).

[#14 posted by Anonymous , December 29, 2008 5:56 PM]

One of the artistic plugins for GIMP has been able to do this sort of thing for a long time, the trick is to know what settings to use and how to preprocess the image first.

BTW there is NOTHING fractal about it, a lion made of little lions would be fractal or even if there was true self similarity at different scales in the brush strokes you could call it fractal.

[#15 posted by Gwyllm , December 29, 2008 6:21 PM]

It's old already. Done. Last Week. Plug-ins conceal/hide so much hideous.

[#16 posted by saragorn , December 29, 2008 10:10 PM]

That scared me at first! I thought it was going to be some creepy bug or infection or bacteria or something.

[#17 posted by echidna , December 30, 2008 3:12 AM]

Fractals don't have to be strictly self-similar. So a fractal lion wouldn't have to be constructed of mini-lions on small scales. It just happens that most well-known fractals are like this. The only requirement is, broadly speaking, that they show the same level of detail on all scales. Coastlines (at least idealised ones) being a classic example of fractals that aren't highly self-similar like this.

But in this case, the images are clearly not fractal in any sense.

[#18 posted by dculberson , December 30, 2008 7:26 AM]

Could it be that they use fractal equations in rendering the images, hence the name?

And it is pretty awesome; definitely looks like LSD effects to me. The more subtle work even more so than the wild stuff like the lion.

[#19 posted by Anonymous , December 30, 2008 5:06 PM]

Nice effect! +3

No mac version -10