Filters
| Adobe Photoshop Elements comes equipped with a number of filters. Filters are various effects that can be bestowed upon an image, a layer, or a selection to change the way they look. Filters can be accessed by going to the top menu bar and clicking on Filter which will open a dropdown menu. From this dropdown menu you will have several options of filter categories such as Adjustments and Render. In each of these categories is a number filters that can be applied onto the work you are doing. Often the difficulty with filters is deciding which filter is the best one to use. A.P.E. comes with 107 different filters and variability can even occur within using the same filters. When choosing some filters different dialog boxes will appear while with others no dialog boxes appear and the effect just occurs. |  |
| All the following filters have no dialog box and occur once you choose the filter from the dropdown menu. |
| Adjustments | Equalize Invert |
| Blur | Average Blur Blur More |
| Noise | Despeckle |
| Render | Clouds Difference Clouds |
| Sharpen | Sharpen Sharpen Edges Sharpen More |
| Stylize | Find Edges |
| Video | NTSC Colors |
| All remaining filters have dialog boxes of some kind. Often the difficulty is that the dialog boxes for the various filters can be just as different as the filters themselves. Some of the dialog boxes have slider bars, some only have check boxes, others you may actually have to move the cursor around on a window of the image you want to change. All around this makes it difficult to tell how to use filters exactly and a lot of learning filters is by trial and error. Many (but not all) the filters have a small check box labeled Preview in their dialog boxes. If that box is checked you will be able to observe the effects of the filter actually on your image or in the small view that appears within the given dialog box. Making sure the Preview is checked is a good way to ensure that you have chosen the right filter and that you have applied it to the desired amount. Applying the filters that have a dialog boxes is as simple as clicking the OK button in the dialog box. |
| On the initial Filter dropdown menu there is a choice named Filter Gallery this opens a large dialog box in which you can select from several of the filters. When the Filter Gallery first opens up you will notice a number of folders with arrows to the left of them in the middle of the dialog box. By clicking on one of these arrows several thumbnails will appear with names of filters under them. You will notice that the thumbnails give you some idea of what a specific filter will do. By choosing a filter thumbnail several options will appear at the right of the Filter Gallery dialog box. These will generally be slider bars and occasional dropdown options. By adjusting these options you can view the varying effects at the left of the dialog box where there appears a zoomed in look at the image you are working on. |
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The following are the filters that are available in the Filter Gallery.
| Artistic |  |
| Brush Strokes |  |
| Distort |  |
| Sketch |  |
| Stylize |  |
| Texturize |  |
| It should be noted that not every filter that has a dialog box appears in the Filter Gallery, some of them do not. |
As said before, A.P.E. comes with very many filters and the variation in use of even a single filter can be great. The best way to get an understanding of filters is to play around with them. Try different filters on an image and see how it comes out looking. Also try different combinations of filters. Learning to use filters can be very rewarding as it opens up so many possibilities for creativity and allows you to make spectacular images in A.P.E. |
