Palettes that Make Fractals Shine

Source density and visible bands

The strips illustrate dense and sparse color variation. They are not captured app output or a measured comparison. Actual banding depends on the source colors, texture width, interpolation, escape values, contrast, and display.

A wider LUT retains more variation along the gradient. It cannot add detail that was absent from the source or increase the precision of a fractal coordinate.

Color Settings

Hi-res LUT

Enabled selects a one-row texture with 1,024 texels; disabled selects 256. The renderer uploads that actual width. At four bytes per BGRA texel, the raw row is 4 KiB or 1 KiB before resource overhead. A denser table can preserve subtle gradient variation; it is not a universal performance or smoothness guarantee.

Exact LUT and Smooth

Exact LUT chooses the nearest source stop while constructing each texel. Smooth uses a Core Graphics gradient. Both are then linearly sampled in Metal. Try Exact for deliberately stepped color and Smooth for blended transitions. Exact photo import is a separate choice: it controls how many sampled source stops are retained.

Display-P3 and sRGB

Display-P3 can represent colors outside the sRGB gamut and is used during palette construction and color conversion. sRGB is useful for common sharing workflows. A wider gamut does not mean more channel bits or smoother arithmetic. The active Metal LUT and output are BGRA8Unorm; the current implementation does not establish a scene-linear, HDR, or validated ICC round-trip pipeline. Check an exported PNG in its intended destination.

Manage custom palettes

Open More (…) → Manage Palettes to manage your custom library. Use the palette row actions to export or delete an item, and the manager’s Import or Export All controls to transfer files. Built-in palettes are protected. The detailed User Guide covers the current phone and tablet controls.

Keep a palette JSON backup before deleting a custom palette. A bookmark that refers to it by name may need that file when opened on another device.

Share Palettes (Import/Export)

Export one or all of your custom palettes to share with others or move between your devices. Import brings them into your library.

Export a Single Palette

1. Open More (…) → Manage Palettes.
2. Swipe right on the palette row to reveal Export.
3. Choose a share destination (Files, Messages, Mail, etc.).

Export All (Custom) Palettes

1. In Manage Palettes, tap Export All at the top.
2. Save or share the exported file.

Import Palettes

1. In Manage Palettes, tap Import at the top.
2. Select the palette file you received or previously saved.

Tip: Use Export All to back up your custom palette library or to sync between iPhone and iPad.

Note: Palette names are unique. If you add a duplicate (e.g., “Chrome”), it becomes “Chrome (2)”, “Chrome (3)”, etc.

Built-in Palette List (Complete)

Showing 156 palettes. Only Name and Type are shown. Click a column header to sort.