Many may know this, but to those just coming to the idea of apophysis, it is very useful for making bright and colorful fractals, and this tutorial will show exactly what yuo need to know.

1. start by opening up the gradient menu, as shown below - in this tutorial i will show you how to make use of the presets but i may expand into making your own

Click 1

2. Then choose from the dropdown list which preset you want to use, and click on the button on the left that says rotate, this button is very cleverly hidden and is why beginners dont always make the best use of their preset. i am going to use the preset shown in picture one.

Click 2

3. with these setting, and using the sliding bar you can create an amazingly different gradient, but first ill explain what each one does

Hue: Changes color, many of you will be used to this because of ps

Saturation: Changes how grey the image is, the less saturation there is, the greyer the image will be, again many will be used to this because of ps

Brightness: No guesses as to what this does, obviously changes how brught the gradient will be

Contrast: Again, obvious - changes how much contrast there is in the colors

Blur: Allows you to merge the colors to make one color or very smoothly flowing colors

Frequency: Preset will be set to 1, if you increase it just sqaushes the grad in again allowing you to get lots of lines of color, useful where there is one dominating color

Using the same preset shown before, i have made this gradient:

Click for Gradient

and applied to a render it would look like this (not rendered, just previewed) :

Finished Gradient Applied on a Fractal