Fractals have a lot of theory behind them, but I am not going to bother you with Math now. To be honest, I don’t like Math at all, so let’s try to create a fractal-like image without even thinking about all the numbers crunched by Photoshop to help us accomplish our goal! Are you ready? Fire up your Photoshop and prepare to get something similar to the image below…

 

1. Create a new Photoshop document - 500X500 pixels, with a white background. If you want, you can use a higher resolution, but be sure to make it square.

 

2. Add a new layer (simply use Ctrl+Shift+N), and fill it with black, using the Paint Bucket tool.

 

3. Open the Filter menu, and choose Render>Lens Flare.

 

4. Use 50-300mm Zoom with 100% Brightness, as you can see in the screenshot below. Be sure to place the lens flare in about the same location as I did.

 

5. Now, open the Filter menu again, and go to Distort>Twirl.

 

6. Be sure to have a 190 degrees angle, by using the slider or by typing in the value.

 

7. Duplicate the layer.

8. Rotate the new layer 90 degrees clockwise.

 

9. Change its blending mode to Lighter Color.

 

10. Duplicate this layer again, and repeat steps 8 and 9.

11. The resulting layer must be duplicated again, and once you repeat steps 8 and 9 for the resulting one, group the four layers you got (see the screenshot below).

 

12. Duplicate this group.

13. Merge the group, and flip horizontally the resulting layer.

 

14. Apply Difference mode from Blending Options to this layer, and it’s done!

 

15. Enjoy your result!