I've been a Tweaker, Zoomer and Mapper since 1995-6 when I first picked up Fractint all those years ago. I have still to write my completely original par or frm file. The most I can ever do is to modify or tweak this variable or that parameter or frm file only a couple characters or digits here and there. I am still in utter awe of those pure "codists" who can cresate completely original and unique works of fractal art from a completely new and original frm or par file. For myself, the real miralcle of Fractint is that it only takes a little tweak, or modification to an existing par, map or frm file and even a complete tyro like myslef can create a completely unique an original work of art that never existed before. Now that's really amazing! Even though I probably have the slowest Fractint learning curve of all time, since I'm only now just begining to figure how it works, I'm still able to create original, new, and attactive art with Fractint. In these Copyright Crazed days not as many folk are posting their Par and Frm files as generously as they used to... So the problem for an aging "newbie" like myself is to try to glean "how it was done" from trying to deconstruct, analyse, and reverse engineer Gif files that Fractint produces back into par files. Apparently whether or not it's in complianceof some arcane copyright claim re: the usage & generation of Gif files, or a simple act of protecting one's own personal work from plagerism, many web cruising Fractint artists now convert their work from the "intelligent" venerable *.gif format to a "dumb" format like a jpeg, from which you cannot glean anything or deconstruct to a par file. Here's my question to the still existing Fractint fans out there: Can anyone suggest any other "learning methods", for analysing, deconstructing and reverse engineering existing "finished" fractint *.gif ( and possibly even jpeg) files? Can any of the image files produced by UF be deconstructed & reverse engineeered back into *.upr files? All the best, TG