Anti aliasing

One of the reasons to render fractals to disk is to be able to use anti aliasing. Anti aliasing improves 

the quality of rendered images by sharpening and smoothening them, removing jagged edges.

No anti aliasing

Normal anti aliasing

Anti aliasing increases the time it takes to render the image. The effect of anti aliasing and the extra 

time required depends on the anti aliasing settings you use when starting a render job (see 

Rendering images

 and 

Rendering parameter files

).

The following settings are available:

Anti aliasing

Selects common anti aliasing settings. 

G     

Off turns anti aliasing off completely.

G     

Quick selects minimal anti aliasing settings that calculate relatively 

quickly.

G     

Normal selects normal anti aliasing settings that provide good quality 

and reasonable calculation times.

G     

Non adaptive turns off adaptive anti aliasing. This gives better 

results for some images, but it requires (much) longer to calculate.

G     

Custom allows you to specify your own anti aliasing settings.

Threshold

Specifies the threshold to use for adaptive anti aliasing. Ultra Fractal anti 

aliases a pixel only when the difference between the pixel and its neighbors 

(red + green + blue) is larger than or equal to the threshold. 

Use 0 to turn adaptive anti aliasing off. This slows the calculation down, but is 

required if adaptive anti aliasing does not work well (for example when the 

fractal contains many thin lines, such as with the 

Embossed

 fractal formulas).

Depth

Specifies the anti aliasing depth (1 or greater). Greater depths give better 

quality at the expense of calculation time. Increasing the depth by one can 

easily double or triple the calculation time. The default value of 1 is usually 

sufficient.

Subdivisions

Selects how pixels are subdivided for anti aliasing. The default value 9 (3x3) 

gives better quality and is recommended. Use 4 (2x2) only for quick renders, 

or when the depth is greater than 1.

The Normal setting is recommended, and will usually give the best results. If you are preparing 

images for printing, it may not be necessary to use anti aliasing. This is because on prints, individual 

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