Zooming. To zoom and rotate a fractal use two fingers. With one finger you can move (also while zooming is still going on).

Autozoom. The program detects satellites (Minibrots) in the Mandelbrot fractal. As soon as they are close to the center of the screen take your hands off (while zooming) and the program will automatically navigate towards it.

Fly into. To automatically zoom in from factor 1 to the actual position choose “Lock and zoom in” from the menu. The app will then reset the zoom but lock the current position and automatically start zooming. The speed can be regulated with pinch and spread gestures.

Saving fractals. You may save the actual position by chosing “Save fractal” from the menu. The fractal will afterwards appear in your Retinamandelbrot gallery. You can store the environment and cache data collected as well. This will allow you to later instantaneously reload the current position without having to wait for background calculations. (This data can later be freed without deleting the position.) Also you may generate a high resolution photo of the current position or create a video. Those will be saved automatically to your photo gallery if you give that permission. Otherwise those may be shared using the “Share ...” option from the context menu in the gallery. During the creation of photos or videos the app must be in foreground and the iPhone or iPad unlocked due to Apple restrictions.

Julia morphing. To show the Julia window tap on the small button left to the menu button. The reference position for the Julia may then be changed using “double tap and move” outside of the window. Alternatively you may use your Apple pen. You can zoom inside the Julia fractal as well in the window and - even more easily - after maximizing it.

Trace mode. By tapping on the “footprints” in the lower right corner, the sequence of complex numbers underlying the Mandelbrot (resp. Julia) iteration is made visible. The starting point can be choosen using “double tap and move” or the Apple pen. This feature is only avaiable for small zoom factors (the iteration always goes all over the place).

High resolution. The current image has always more or less the resolution of the screen. However, to have an even sharper image choose “High res” from the menu. The image is then generated in double resolution (i.e. 4 values are calculated for each pixel) and later resized using anti-alias.

Deep zooms. The program allows you to zoom with factors up to 10^20000 and beyond. However with increasing zoom level and complexity you may have to wait some time for background calculations to finish. Wait frequently for the red percentage [...%] to reach 100 %. If you are sufficiently close to a satellite an orange percentage [...%] appears. You have to wait for that to finish too. Afterwards you may zoom fast towards the satellite (without waiting again). You can then also jump zoom levels by choosing “Halfway to satellite” or “To satellite” from the menu. Sometimes a green percentage [...%] appears. That means the app is filling its cache in the background for faster display. If the image doesn't appear immediately you may have to wait for this to finish as well. (The calculation of the environment and detection of satellites can be manually initiated at the actual position by choosing “Recalculate environment” from the menu.)

Retinamandelbrot coordinates and links. By choosing “Share coordinates” in your Retinamandelbrot gallery you may share your current fractal with all its settings in the human-readable JSON format as well as the thumbnail in the gallery. By choosing “Share link” in your Retinamandelbrot gallery you may share a link to your actual position that opens the current fractal with the same settings. If Retinamandelbrot is installed you have just to click on the link. The JSON data can be processed by selecting it in any app and then using “Share...” with Retinamandelbrot.

Depiction settings. There are 5 basic built-in depiction modes. These have additional parameters that can be changed using the buttons in the lower right corner. Just experiment with them. The “Iteration” depiction mode, for example, maps the iteration number to a simple palette in which colors appear and disappear in waves. Colors may be added, changed, and frequencies of the corresponding wave changed. You may create your own depiction modes by “long tap” on any of the depiction modes and choose “Modify...”. The shader code may be modified arbitrarily.

Limitations. The developed Mandelbrot rendering engine is still experimental. This means that not every region of the Mandelbrot can be rendered flawlessly or some regions cannot be rendered at all. Sometimes the rendering is slow even if it could be fast in principle. Exceeding the memory limits due to high zoom levels and iteration number (of the reference point) may sometimes just crash the app. We hope to improve on this in future versions but hope that you'll have a lot of fun already with the engine as it is. Sometimes drawing artefacts show up due to the dynamics of the app. This can sometimes be remedied by chosing “Redraw” or “Redraw and clear cache” from the menu.