Smooth spectrum for Mandelbrot Set rendering

Here is a typical inner loop for a naive Mandelbrot generator. To get a smooth colour you want to pass in the real and complex "lengths" and the iteration you bailed out at. I've included the Mandelbrot code so you can see which vars to use to calculate the colour.

for (ix = 0; ix < panelMain.Width; ix++)
    {
    cx = cxMin + (double )ix * pixelWidth;
    // init this go 
    zx = 0.0;
    zy = 0.0;
    zx2 = 0.0;
    zy2 = 0.0;
    for (i = 0; i < iterationMax && ((zx2 + zy2) < er2); i++)
        {
        zy = zx * zy * 2.0 + cy;
        zx = zx2 - zy2 + cx;
        zx2 = zx * zx;
        zy2 = zy * zy;
        }
    if (i == iterationMax)
        {
        // interior, part of set, black
        // set colour to black
        g.FillRectangle(sbBlack, ix, iy, 1, 1);
        }
    else
        {
        // outside, set colour proportional to time/distance it took to converge
        // set colour not black
        SolidBrush sbNeato = new SolidBrush(MapColor(i, zx2, zy2));
        g.FillRectangle(sbNeato, ix, iy, 1, 1);
        }

and MapColor below: (see this link to get the ColorFromHSV function)

 private Color MapColor(int i, double r, double c)
                {
                double di=(double )i;
                double zn;
                double hue;

                    zn = Math.Sqrt(r + c);
                    hue = di + 1.0 - Math.Log(Math.Log(Math.Abs(zn))) / Math.Log(2.0);  // 2 is escape radius
                    hue = 0.95 + 20.0 * hue; // adjust to make it prettier
                    // the hsv function expects values from 0 to 360
                    while (hue > 360.0)
                        hue -= 360.0;
                    while (hue < 0.0)
                        hue += 360.0;

                    return ColorFromHSV(hue, 0.8, 1.0);
                }

MapColour is "smoothing" the bailout values from 0 to 1 which then can be used to map a colour without horrible banding. Playing with MapColour and/or the hsv function lets you alter what colours are used.

This is the smooth color algorithm:

Lets say you start with the complex number z0 and iterate n times until it escapes. Let the end point be zn.

A smooth value would be

nsmooth := n + 1 - Math.log(Math.log(zn.abs()))/Math.log(2)

This only works for mandelbrot, if you want to compute a smooth function for julia sets, then use

Complex z = new Complex(x,y);
double smoothcolor = Math.exp(-z.abs());

for(i=0;i<max_iter && z.abs() < 30;i++) {
    z = f(z);
    smoothcolor += Math.exp(-z.abs());
}

Then smoothcolor is in the interval (0,max_iter).

Divide smoothcolor with max_iter to get a value between 0 and 1.

To get a smooth color from the value:

This can be called, for example (in Java):

Color.HSBtoRGB(0.95f + 10 * smoothcolor ,0.6f,1.0f);

since the first value in HSB color parameters is used to define the color from the color circle.

Use the smooth coloring algorithm to calculate all of the values within the viewport, then map your palette from the lowest to highest value. Thus, as you zoom in and the higher values are no longer visible, the palette will scale down as well. With the same constants for n and B you will end up with a range of 0.0 to 1.0 for a fully zoomed out set, but at deeper zooms the dynamic range will shrink, to say 0.0 to 0.1 at 200% zoom, 0.0 to 0.0001 at 20000% zoom, etc.