The reflection filter is the main filter of the Reflections skin, obviously. As the name implies it reflects images, as if by a mirror. By default another filter is enabled - the gradient paint filter - and this has another effect on the resultant images. However because I have a lot going on and I don't like writing documentation that filter I have not documented yet. Anyway the reflection filter control looks like this:
Below I explain each part. Note that for this I have enabled the option to chain reflections which I discuss below.
If you tick Only show reflections the original images will not be part of the resultant image.
The Direction obviously indicates which direction the reflections will be: up, down, left or right (chaining reflections can change this, see below).
The Reflection ratio sets how much of the image to reflect; you can set no longer than 5 and no higher than 100: if you want only half the image reflected set it to 50% (default 100).
This feature is probably a niche feature but this is the idea behind it. For some images it would create an interesting effect to take the reflection and reflect that reflection a different direction (or even the same direction). It can also happen that for some images doing this more than once makes for another interesting effect.
So in the skin UI if you tick the box Chain reflections a few configuration settings will become active. This is what it looks like by default:
As you can see it says: Chain reflections (clockwise) [1] time(s) by [1]. You can change the clockwise to anticlockwise, obviously, but what does it mean and what about the other numbers?
Before I can explain the direction I need to explain the numbers. The first number, the number of times, is how many times to chain the reflection filter: 1 - 7 allowed (but note that the higher the number the more memory required and this is why I limited it to 7: it can cause Java to run out of memory and fail).
The second number by 1 has a valid range of 0 - 3 and it is what matters when it comes to the direction. Assuming you're reflecting DOWN and you chain 1 time clockwise by 1 direction the images will be reflected DOWN and then the resultant image will be reflected again, this time LEFT.
If you had selected 0 it would reflect DOWN twice; if you select 2 it'll be UP and 3 it'll be RIGHT.
The more times you do this the less interesting it can get (but not necessarily). An example album which has photos of Africa that my auntie and uncle took on I think it was their 2009 holiday in Africa and fractals in the Julia Set that I generated in June 2020 I think it was can be found here. An example photo:
An example fractal:
