There are only three Render effects: Clouds, Julia Fractal, and Mandelbrot Fractal. It's hard to figure out just what to do with Render effects. But, if you are geeky like me, you will love them:
Out of these three effects, Clouds is the one you will probably find the most use for. It doesn't really make clouds. What it does is render a cloud-like image based on a mathematical algorithm, which you will need an advanced math book to understand. For our purposes, you don't need to know how it does it, but just need to know what it does.
Clouds has three controls: Scale, Roughness, and Blend Mode. When you first employ it, your image will disappear completely and be replaced by some grayish clouds. Scale will give you a zoomed view of those clouds. Roughness will determine how soft or hard you want your clouds to look. It is the Blend Mode that makes things interesting.
Blend Mode will allow you to blend the clouds you create with your photos in very interesting ways. There are 14 blend modes and not enough space in this chapter to explain what each one does. But there is space to explain that each one will blend the clouds into the picture in a different way. Then, using the Scale and Roughness sliders, you can further change the way the photo looks.
The Reseed button will change the formation of the rendered clouds if you aren't happy with their placement.
Honestly, using this effect has so many variables that it's impossible to describe how it will change the look of each of your images. The best way to really see what it does is to play with it. The following screenshot shows the 14 modes of Blend Mode:
The next question is, why would one use this effect? You can use it to create a fog effect in an image or to add texture to a background layer and make it a bit more complex. You can add colors or other effects to make your image more stylized. This is an area where you should just start stacking different blend modes, effects, and adjustments and see what you can come up with. If you don't like something you added, you can always go into the History window and remove whatever you don't like.
Fractals are visual representations of mathematical formulas. The subject of fractals is a very complex one, and there are many books on the subject written by people far smarter than me.
Julia Fractal and Mandelbrot Fractal (discussed in the next section) replace your image with a colorful image, as shown in the following screenshot. The controls Factor, Zoom, Angle, and Quality work in the exact same way as the controls in the other effects covered already.
Apart from creating a really cool image, Julia Fractal doesn't do much; however, you could use it to create some interesting layered effects.
