How to Create Fractals in Photoshop Easily
I have never tried creating a piece of fractal artwork. This is my first attempt and I am sharing my steps with everyone. I hope my steps are easy enough to give a headstart to those who needs to do up a similar effect for their projects.
Preview of Final Image
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Create a new document of A4 size with 300dpi resolution. Fill the background with black color.
Create a new layer and rename it as Marking. Using the Pencil tool with 1 px and white color, draw a vertical line. You can hold down the SHIFT key when drawing to ensure a straight line is drawn. Once you are done, go to Edit > Free Transform. On the Transform Panel, set the Rotate to 10 degrees.
Duplicate the Markings layer and flip it horizontally. Place the two slanted lines together so their bottom meets each other to form a V shape.
You may draw your own or download some vector shapes and place it in between the two slanted lines. I downloaded mine from ShutterStock.
Give some colors to your shape. It can be anything of your preferences.
Repeat the same procedures for more vector shapes. Lay them vertically as shown below.
Merge all the shapes as a single layer. Press ALT + CTRL + T and it will launch a set of control points, similar to the ones seen for Free Transform. Set the scale to 90% and Rotate to 20 degrees. Position it the way I did below. Hit ENTER when done.
Press ALT + CTRL + SHIFT + T. You can start to see your earlier transformation was actually recorded, and you can repeat the same effect with good accuracy. Keep doing until you form a nice curl of shapes.
Merge all the shapes as a single layer. Duplicate and rotate it to fill in other spaces of the document.
Repeat the same step till you fill up the entire document.
Merge all the shape layers again. Duplicate it and reduce its size. Set the Opacity of the lower copy to 40%. Go to Filter > Blur > Lens Blur. Set the Radius to 15px.
Create a new layer above the shapes and rename it as Glow. Using the Paint Brush with white color and size 200px, paint a few white dots around the document as shown below.
Set the Blend Mode of Glow layer to Overlay and you are done! Hope you find this tutorial useful for your upcoming project. Cheers!
I am Johnson Koh, an Art Director based in Singapore. Founded 10Steps.SG with the purpose to share my experiments and interesting design news. Connect with me on LinkedIn. 
![Kabbetz Ha'Esrim Poster vers. 2 [client]](http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7198/6904008699_ebbf5a44c2_s.jpg)
24 Comments | Write a Comment
this tutorial is awesome! i did my fractals
thanks a lot!
Awesome tutorial! I’ve always been intrigued by fractals. I will have to check this out in the near future and make my first one soon. So excited!
Great tutorial! Thanks for sharing!
it is great . hey friend ,,please, can you make pdf all your post that you wrote? i wanna download . thanks a lots…
Hi,
congratulations – this picture looks absolutely great.
Thans for sharing.
Greetings
Franz
Great tutorial! Thanks for sharing it. It is amazing that the combination of the pattern can be so nice.
yes, simple and effective. It “looks” simple but in reality, the touch of the experienced designer can be seen in the drawing of picture number 5, the basic drawing that is. I like the part of resizing and blurring on a different layer. The “overlay” method id great, too.
awesome technique!!
Thank you.
Is beautiful very
Very nice and simple tutorial and the end result is very creative!
Great tutorial…
But why not using illustrator for this?
nice method.
Great stuff i like this design works
Great tutorial. I suggest creating an action to make the duplication, rotation, and resizing of the shapes go faster but other than that, great work.
thanks a lot for sharing this! i really enjoyed!
really nice! thank you!
I like this tutorial.
Thanks!
here’s mine: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150097225034030&set=a.403454209029.181223.371948454029
I enjoyed this tutorial. I am so glad that you made it because I have been looking for a tut like this. Thanks!
excellent stuff. thanks for sharing – simon at pixmac photography
wow… cool…
Johnson – That was superb and amazing!
Kudos!
great stuff
thankyou for sharing!