Fraqtive is an open-source generator of Mandelbrot and Julia fractals.

Launch the program, a familiar Mandelbrot view appears, and it's not immediately obvious what to do next. Until you move the mouse cursor over a point of interest, spin the mouse wheel, and see just how quickly you can zoom in for a better view.

As you move the mouse cursor around any areas of detail, you'll also see a small display of the equivalent Julia fractal view. If you see something interesting, double-click to switch and you can explore that fractal, instead.

Click "3D View", click and drag and you're able to rotate the current plane in 3D space. Fraqtive renders images using OpenGL for super-fast performance.

As usual with fractal programs, it's easy to lose track of your position. Fraqtive helps out by including Back and Forward buttons to navigate through your view history. There are also buttons to restore your default view and position.

Fraqtive has many ways to play around with the image, from colour mapping, gradients, detail levels, anti-aliasing modes and more. We had no idea what most of these would do, but typically you just drag sliders or click buttons and watch the image change immediately.

Find a view you like and you can copy it to the clipboard or save it as a file. Fraqtive can also generate images with custom resolutions of up to 8000x8000, handy if you need maximum detail.