Part - 01 of 02

Filters

It adds spice to Photoshop. It can fulfill the need of beginner as well as professionals. The first time user of Photoshop can just open an image and apply filters with single click. Professional will be more serious and can create wonders out of it. Let us see the art, science and philosophy behind the filters. Before we proceed further it is necessary to mention that we are going to observe the features of the filters provided by Photoshop only. Third party filters is another vast subject need separate attention.

So, what is filter?

Filters are the ready-made effects grouped under filter menu of Photoshop can be applied with single clicked either on the entire image or a selection. Photoshop 6.0 come up with rich variety of filters starting from artistic to digimark. In general filters are used to add special effects to image. It can be used for photo retouching. It is used to create realistic textures, stunning text effects. It can entirely change the environment of an image. Generally filters come up with the dialog box, which consist of small pWallpapers window and pWallpapers check box. PWallpapers window will show the immediate effect of the filter on the image without actually applying on it. With the help of pWallpapers check box it can be seen applied on the original image also. PWallpapers window provides another good facility. It pans an image so that you can see any part of the image and judge the effect of the filter on that particular part. Let us check out some main filters.

Artistic

As a name suggest this filter is used to achieve artistic effects. You can get traditional fine arts effects with this filter. Effects resembles with natural and traditional artistic creations created with different types of brushes, strokes, colored papers, different styles of painting, posterized effects etc.

Filters > Artistic > Cut Out

Available Filters under the Artistic sub menu
Colored Pencil | Cutout | Dry Brush | Film Grain | Fresco | Neon Glow | Paint Daubs | Palette Knife | Plastic Warp | Poster Edges | Rough Pastels | Smudge Stick | Sponge | Underpainting | Watercolor

Blur

It is an important filter used for photo retouching work. Most of the time it is applied on scanned image. It is used to soften entire or the part of an image. In the technical words it can be explained like, it smoothens the transition between hard edges of an image.

Filters > Blur > Radial blur

Available Filters under the Blur sub menu
Average | Blur | Blur More | Box Blur | Gaussian Blur | Lens Blur | Lens Blur | Motion Blur | Radial Blur | Shape Blur | Smart Blur | Surface Blur

Brush Strokes

It is similar to artistic filters but more using brush strokes and ink effects generating traditional fine art type of output.

Filters > Brush Strokes > Angled Strokes

Direction Balance : 50
Stroke Length : 3
Sharpness : 3

Available Filters under the Brush Stroke sub menu
Accented Edges | Angled Strokes | Crosshatch | Dark Strokes | Ink Outline | Spatter | Sprayed Strokes | Sumi - e

Distort

These filters takes times to apply hence require more memory for smooth working. It distorts images and creates reshaping effects.

Filters > Distort > Ripple

Amount : 100%
Size : Medium

Available Filters under the Distrot sub menu
Diffuse Glow | Displace | Glass | Lens Correction | Ocean Ripple | Pinch | Polar Coordinates | Ripple | Shear | Spherize | Twirl | Wave | ZigZag