Chapter 20: Using Filters

Overview

When images created in Photoshop really make your eyes pop out, chances are good that filters were involved. Like many of Photoshop s other techniques, filters have their origin in the analog world of photography. A photographer uses a filter to correct or enhance lighting, and to create or adjust anomalies of perspective. Photoshop s filters take on these tasks and expand them far beyond the traditional tools.

You ve applied filters in previous chapters to retouch images and enhance contrast. Here, you ll see further that with filters, you can adjust focus, eliminate unwanted artifacts, alter or create complex selection masks, breathe life into less-than -perfect scans , and apply a range of effects previously unavailable to the traditional photographer. Filters also have the capability to completely destroy anything recognizable in an image and turn it into a swirling vortex of pixels gone wild.

In this chapter, you ll look at the wonders filters can achieve. You ll learn about:

• Filter basics

• Photoshop s new Filter Gallery

• Constructive and destructive filters

• Effects filters

• Render filters

• The amazing Liquify filter

• The Pattern Maker