Textures & fractal graphics.

If you look at many objects in nature, you will notice they contain various levels of detail. For example, grass, sand and water all contain wide variations in height from large sizes (like a hill, dune or wave) to small sizes (mound of sand or ripple of water). This pattern of large and small variations can be recreated in a graphics application as fractal noise. And that's exactly what Texture Anarchy filters do!

At left, the 38 fractal noise types that you can choose from in Texture Anarchy Explorer. These patterns are the basis for every texture that Texture Anarchy creates.

Go ahead, make some noise!

Fractal noise is the method of using random values and grayscale colors to create textures and objects that cannot be described using simple geometric shapes. Use fractal noise to create organic-looking backgrounds, displacement maps, textures, and mattes. You can also simulate things like caustics, clouds, lava, flowing water, and gas.

Texture Anarchy recreates this by simply adding up noisy functions at a range of different scales. A fractal algorithm, by definition, is a repeating pattern that goes on endlessly. It is mathematically based and can just go on forever. Some of Photoshop's built-in filters, like Render> Clouds, also use fractal noise. Fractals are simply everywhere once you start looking for them.

Sometimes you can get the fractal to repeat seamlessly, and that's what we've done with Tiler Anarchy. Sometimes the fractal creates a pattern that repeats itself, but not exactly in the same way. That is how Texture Explorer works.