20.4. Special Effects Filters

One of the best ways to experiment with the almost 50 Special Effects filters is to use the Filter Gallery to browse through their thumbnails and click on them to see what effect they'll have on your image. Access the Filter Gallery by selecting it from the Filters menu. Choosing almost any of the filters in the Artistic, Brush Strokes, Distort, Sketch, Stylize, or Texture submenus of the Filters menu also launches the Filter Gallery. Some of the filters found in those categories, such as Lens Blur, Ripple, and Pinch, which are under the Distort menu, have their own standard dialog boxes.

The way the Filter Gallery works is simple: Launch the Filter Gallery using either of the two methods discussed above. Here's what you need to know about working in the Filter Gallery:

  • Choose a filter by clicking on one of the thumbnails in any of the six filter categories listed. Use the settings in the panel on the left to customize the filter's effect. Switch to a different filter by simply clicking on a different thumbnail or by choosing one from the popup menu at the top of the settings area. As with other dialog boxes, you can see the effects of your changes reflected in the preview area on the left, and you can change the magnification of the preview area using the zoom controls.

  • Stack multiple filters to create complex effects by clicking the New Effect Layer icon in the lower right of the Filter Gallery window. You can continue to stack filters on top of ...

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