Photo Filter

The Photo Filter command is designed to simulate traditional over-the-lens warming and cooling filters, though it actually lets you choose custom colors in addition to the presets. Its effect is similar to that of a solid color layer set to Color Blend mode, but the Photo Filter is easier to set up, and hence a bit quicker.

We find that the default 25-percent intensity is usually about twice what we need, and we often disable the Preserve Luminosity checkbox because it tends to exaggerate the effect in the highlights. Nevertheless, Photo Filter offers a quick and easy way to make images more appealing by warming them, or to make them more disturbing by cooling them. Figure 6-70 shows some Photo Filter warming and cooling adjustments.

Figure 6-70. Warming and cooling with Photo Filter

You can also achieve many different creative effects using either the stronger preset colors, or by creating your own filter colorjust double-click on the color swatch to open the Color Picker.

Photo Filter is particularly effective at low intensity settingsthe examples shown in Figure 6-70 are a bit stronger than the Photo Filter edits we usually make, which typically use intensities in the 312 percent rangewe emphasized these to make the effect obvious in print.