Combining images

In this recipe, we will combine the famous Mandelbrot fractal (for more information on Madelbrot set visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set) and the image of Lena. These types of fractals are defined by a recursive formula, where you calculate the next complex number in a series by multiplying the current complex number you have, by itself and adding a constant to it.

Getting ready

Install SciPy, if necessary. The See Also section of this recipe, has a reference to the related recipe.

How to do it...

We will start by initializing the arrays, followed by generating and plotting the fractal, and finally, combining the fractal with the Lena image.

1. Initialize the arrays.

   We will initialize x, y, and z arrays corresponding to the pixels in the image area with the meshgrid, zeros, and linspace functions:

   x, y = numpy.meshgrid(numpy.linspace(x_min, x_max, SIZE),
       numpy.linspace(y_min, y_max, SIZE))
   c = x + 1j * y
   z = c.copy()
   fractal = numpy.zeros(z.shape, dtype=numpy.uint8...