Using Fractally, you are able to share small files, with others, that describe the view you are seeing in the app. These small files describe the coordinates in the Mandelbrot or Julia set, and can be used by the app to navigate to the same view that you were seeing.
You can share fractally files with others, allowing them to explore interesting areas you find.
If you save an interesting image, you can also save its fractally file so you can come back later to continue exploring there.
Advanced stuff…
Fractally files contain all of the information needed to describe the view, including the color table used. Fractally files are XML files.
This is largely left as an exercise for the user, but if you wanted to define your own color tables, you can do so by creating your own fractally files. If you create these files, you can think of Fractally as an app which displays the files for you.
I believe the XML format for these files is pretty simple. If you are curious about creating your own color tables, try going through all of the color tables in the app, saving a favorite and then saving them each to a file. Then use your favorite editor to examine the files to see how they describe the colors. After examining a few examples, you should see the pattern on how to create your own.
If you want to create your own fractally files you will probably have more success when working on a Mac than on an iPhone or iPad…
One hint: the color tables are generated procedurally. The root of the color tables have a short sequence of colors. Then this sequence may be interpolated to generate intermediate blending values, and repeated to generate a color table which has an unbounded size. If the last color in the root color table is the same as the first color, then any repetitions of the color table will blend smoothly together.
The color table fragment procedures are: color sequence; random; add mid color; interpolate; saw tooth; repeat; fade in and overlay.
If you do create your own color tables, I would be interested in hearing how they worked out. If you develop your own tables and would like to contribute them back to me, that would also be welcome.
Enjoy!
Example:
This is the fractally file that describes the image at the top of the introduction page.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><fractally-fractalurl="https://luckgrib.com/fractally"><fractaltype="mandelbrot-set"><set-originr="0"i="0"/><view-midr="-0.79851616314117768"i="0.16600395286993341"/><zoomscale="5546.7600435477907"/><iterationsmax="400"/><creation-datesecs-since-1970="1602704201"/><color-table-generator><outside-colorr="0"g="0"b="0.1"a="1"/><inside-colorr="0"g="0"b="0"a="1"/><body><repeat><color-table><interpolateinterpolations="10"power="1"><color-table><color-sequence><rgbar="0.0156863"g="0.0156863"b="0.286275"a="1"/><rgbar="0"g="0.027451"b="0.392157"a="1"/><rgbar="0.0470588"g="0.172549"b="0.541176"a="1"/><rgbar="0.0941177"g="0.321569"b="0.694118"a="1"/><rgbar="0.223529"g="0.490196"b="0.819608"a="1"/><rgbar="0.52549"g="0.709804"b="0.898039"a="1"/><rgbar="0.827451"g="0.92549"b="0.972549"a="1"/><rgbar="0.945098"g="0.913726"b="0.74902"a="1"/><rgbar="0.972549"g="0.788235"b="0.372549"a="1"/><rgbar="1"g="0.666667"b="0"a="1"/><rgbar="0.8"g="0.501961"b="0"a="1"/><rgbar="0.6"g="0.341176"b="0"a="1"/><rgbar="0.415686"g="0.203922"b="0.0117647"a="1"/><rgbar="0.258824"g="0.117647"b="0.0588235"a="1"/><rgbar="0.0980392"g="0.027451"b="0.101961"a="1"/><rgbar="0.0352941"g="0.00392157"b="0.184314"a="1"/></color-sequence></color-table></interpolate></color-table></repeat></body></color-table-generator></fractal></fractally-fractal>