Photoshop Filter Gallery: Quick Reference
: Friday, April 13th, 2007 (Last Updated: January 17th, 2008)
: freetime
Filter Gallery is collection of 47 Gallery Effect filters. It’s first introduced in Photoshop CS. With filter gallery you can apply multiply filter, re-order, re-adjust it’s setting and preview its effect in real time. Because you can apply more than one filter and see preview its effect, you have more ability to control over the way your image is affected by each filter. And if you don’t like effect of first filter you’re apply you can go back and re-adjust or completely remove it in no time. This impossible in prior version of photoshop with out Filter Gallery.

From the example above the first row is image with single filter apply and will result in the second row when all three filters applied cumulatively. You can easily adjust effect of each filter or overall final result, you can even go back to adjust the setting the prior filter to fine tuned the effects.
47 Gallery Effect filters
To use Filter Gallery
You can access Filter Gallery by using menu Filter » Filter Gallery or use menu Filter and access in one of 47 gallery effect filter list above.

The Filter Gallery windows consist of three columns Preview, Filter Thumbnails and Filter setting column.
- Preview Column: will show real time preview of filter that you select. When you change the filter setting or apply new filter layer the preview will change. You can zoom in to see the detail of the effect or zoom out to see over all of image using drop-down menu at bottom left of the preview column or press + or - icon.
- Filter Thumbnails Column: You can select filter to apply to your image from this column by click at its thumbnail. Filters are organized in foldable menu by group that list above. Click folder icon to hide or un-hide the filter group. The darker thumbnail is the filter that you currently apply.
- Filter Setting Column: This column will show the setting of filter that you currently select. You can create new filter and stack it on top, re-order filter to be apply, or temporary hide filter that you already select.

- A: Hide/Unhide Filter Thumbnails Column: Hide thumbnail column to get larger preview area. You can also select filter by using drop-down menu (B) from Filter setting column.
- B: Filter Drop-Down Menu: You can select filters from list in this drop-down.
- C: Option for selected filter: In this section will change depend on your filter selected.
- D: Filter List: List of filter effects to apply or arrange. It’s work similar to photoshop layer. Filter effects are applied in the order you select them. (Filter at the bottom of the list will apply First) You can rearrange filters once you apply them by dragging a filter name to another position in the list of applied filters. Rearranging filter effects can dramatically change the way your image looks.You can temporary hide the filter effect in the preview image that already select by click at eye icon
next to the filter that you want to hide. Please note that the hidden filter will not apply when you’re click Ok button to apply Filter Gallery.
- E: New and Trash icon: Click New icon
to add new filter to the list. The select filter will duplicate and stack up on top of the current selected filter. You can also delete applied filters by selecting the filter and clicking the Delete Effect Layer button .
Tip: To save time when trying various filters, experiment by selecting a small, representative part of your image.
Filter Gallery filters: Quick reference
Below is sample effects and brief explanation of all filters that include in Photoshop Filter Gallery. Most of it apply with default setting. But because of relatively small file size to show on web page, in some filter, the size of filter will be decrease to show the filter effect more clearly. In filter that use setting other than default will be note in explanation section.
Artistic filters
Filters in Artistic submenu are create to painterly or special effect for a fine arts or commercial project.
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Colored Pencil
Draws an image using colored pencils on a solid background. Important edges are retained and given a rough crosshatch appearance; the solid background color shows through the smoother areas.
Note: You can change color of background by setting background color at toolbox before apply the filter |
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Cutout
Portrays an image as though it were made from roughly cut-out pieces of colored paper. High-contrast images appear as if in silhouette, while colored images are built up from several layers of colored paper. |
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Dry Brush
Paints the edges of the image using a dry brush technique (between oil and watercolor). The filter simplifies an image by reducing its range of colors to areas of common color. |
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Film Grain
Applies an even pattern to the shadow tones and midtones of an image. A smoother, more saturated pattern is added to the image’s lighter areas. This filter is useful for eliminating banding in blends and visually unifying elements from various sources. |
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Fresco
Paints an image in a coarse style using short, rounded, and hastily applied dabs. |
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Neon Glow
Adds various types of glows to the objects in an image and is useful for colorizing an image while softening its look. To select a glow color, click the glow box and select a color from the color picker. |
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Paint Daubs
Lets you choose from various brush sizes (from 1 to 50) and types for a painterly effect. Brush types include simple, light rough, light dark, wide sharp, wide blurry, and sparkle. |
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Palette Knife
Reduces detail in an image to give the effect of a thinly painted canvas that reveals the texture underneath.
Stroke Size: 4 Stroke Detail: 3 Softness: 0 |
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Plastic Wrap
Coats the image in shiny plastic, accentuating the surface detail. |
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Poster Edges
Reduces the number of colors in an image (posterizes) according to the posterization option you set, and finds the edges of the image and draws black lines on them. Large broad areas of the image have simple shading, while fine dark detail is distributed throughout the image. |
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Rough Pastels
Makes an image appear as if stroked with colored pastel chalk on a textured background. In areas of bright color, the chalk appears thick with little texture; in darker areas, the chalk appears scraped off to reveal the texture. |
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Smudge Stick
Softens an image using short diagonal strokes to smudge or smear the darker areas of the images. Lighter areas become brighter and lose detail. |
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Sponge
Creates images with highly textured areas of contrasting color, appearing to have been painted with a sponge. |
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Underpainting
Paints the image on a textured background, and then paints the final image over it. You have option to select 4 texture to use as background (Brick, Bulap, Canvas and Sand Stone). I use Canvas in this example, that is default setting.
Brush Size: 0 Texture Coverage: 4 |
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Watercolor
Paints the image in a watercolor style, simplifying details in an image, using a medium brush loaded with water and color. Where significant tonal changes occur at edges, the filter saturates the color. |
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Brush Stroke filters
Like the Artistic filters, the Brush Stroke filters give a painterly or fine-arts look using different brush and ink stroke effects. Some of the filters add grain, paint, noise, edge detail, or texture to an image for a pointillist effect.
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Accented Edges
Accentuates the edges of an image. When the edge brightness control is set to a high value, the accents resemble white chalk; when set to a low value, the accents resemble black ink. |
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Angled Strokes
Repaints an image using diagonal strokes. The lighter areas of the image are painted in strokes going in one direction, while the darker areas are painted in strokes going the opposite direction. |
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Crosshatch
Preserves the details and features of the original image while adding texture and roughening the edges of the colored areas in the image with simulated pencil hatching. The Strength option controls the number of hatching passes, from 1 to 3. |
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Dark Strokes
Paints dark areas of an image closer to black with short, tight strokes, and paints lighter areas of the image with long, white strokes. |
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Ink Outlines
Redraws an image with fine narrow lines over the original details, in pen-and-ink style. |
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Spatter
Replicates the effect of a spatter airbrush. Increasing the options simplifies the overall effect. |
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Sprayed Strokes
Repaints an image, using its dominant colors with angled, sprayed strokes of color. |
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Sumi-e
Paints an image in Japanese style, as if with a wet brush full of black ink on rice paper. The effect is soft blurry edges with rich blacks. |
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Distort filters
The Distort filters geometrically distort an image, creating 3D or other reshaping effects. Actually there are 12 filters i this group but only 3 filters are include in Filter Gallery. You can access other filters in this group by using menu Filter » Distort.
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Diffuse Glow
Renders an image as though it were viewed through a soft diffusion filter. The filter adds see-through white noise to an image, with the glow fading from the center of a selection. |
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Glass
Makes an image appear as if it is being viewed through different types of glass.You can choose a glass effect or create your own glass surface as a Photoshop file and apply it. You can adjust scaling, distortion, and smoothness settings. When using surface controls with a file, follow the instructions for the Displace filter. |
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Ocean Ripple
Adds randomly spaced ripples to the image’s surface, making the image look as if it were under water. |
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Sketch filters
Filters in the Sketch submenu add texture to images, often for a 3D effect. The filters also are useful for creating a fine-arts or hand-drawn look. Many of the Sketch filters use the foreground and background color as they redraw the image.
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Bas Relief
Transforms an image to appear carved in low relief and lit to accent the surface variations. Dark areas of the image take on the foreground color, and light colors use the background color. |
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Chalk & Charcoal
Redraws an image’s highlights and midtones with a solid midtone gray back-ground drawn in coarse chalk. Shadow areas are replaced with black diagonal charcoal lines. The charcoal is drawn in the foreground color, the chalk in background color. |
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Charcoal
Redraws an image to create a posterized, smudged effect. Major edges are boldly drawn, while midtones are sketched using a diagonal stroke. Charcoal is the foreground color, and the paper is the background color. |
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Chrome
Treats the image as if it were a polished chrome surface. Highlights are high points, and shadows are low points in the reflecting surface. After applying the filter, use the Levels dialog box to add more contrast to the image. |
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Conté Crayon
Replicates the texture of dense dark and pure white Conté crayons on an image. The Conté Crayon filter uses the foreground color for dark areas and the background color for light areas. For a truer effect, change the foreground color to one of the common Conté Crayon colors (black, sepia, sanguine) before applying the filter. For a muted effect, change the background color to white with some foreground color added to it before applying the filter. |
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Graphic Pen
Uses fine, linear ink strokes to capture the details in the original image and is especially striking with scanned images. The filter replaces color in the original image, using the foreground color for ink and background color for paper. |
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Halftone Pattern
Simulates the effect of a halftone screen while maintaining the continuous range of tones. |
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Note Paper
Creates an image that appears to be constructed of handmade paper. The filter simplifies an image and combines the effects of the Stylize > Emboss and Texture > Grain filters. Dark areas of the image appear as holes in the top layer of paper, revealing the background color. |
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Photocopy
Simulates the effect of photocopying an image. Large areas of darkness tend to copy only around their edges, and midtones fall away to either solid black or white. |
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Plaster
Molds an image from 3D plaster, and then colorizes the result using the foreground and background color. Dark areas are raised, and light areas are sunken. |
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Reticulation
Simulates the controlled shrinking and distorting of film emulsion to create an image that appears clumped in the shadow areas and lightly grained in the highlights. |
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Stamp
Is best used with black-and-white images. The filter simplifies the image to appear stamped with a rubber or wood stamp. |
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Torn Edges
Is particularly useful for images consisting of text or high-contrast objects. The filter reconstructs the image as ragged, torn pieces of paper, and then colorizes the image using the foreground and background colors. |
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Water Paper
Uses blotchy daubs that appear painted onto fibrous, damp paper, causing the colors to flow and blend. |
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Stylize filters
The Stylize filters produce a painted or impressionistic effect on a selection by displacing pixels and by finding and heightening contrast in an image. There are 9 filters in this group but only 1 include in Filter Gallery.
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Glowing Edges
Identifies the edges of color and adds a neon-like glow to them. |
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Texture filters
Use the Texture filters to give an image the appearance of depth or substance, or to add an organic look.
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Craquelure
Paints an image onto a high-relief plaster surface, producing a fine network of cracks that follow the contours of the image. Use this filter to create an embossing effect with images that contain a broad range of color or grayscale values. |
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Grain
Adds texture to an image by simulating different kinds of grain–regular, soft, sprinkles, clumped, contrasty, enlarged, stippled, horizontal, vertical, and speckle. |
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Mosaic Tiles
Draws the image as if it were made up of small chips or tiles and adds grout between the tiles. (In contrast, the Pixelate � Mosaic filter breaks up an image into blocks of different-colored pixels.)
Tile Size: 20 Grout Width: 1 Lighten Grout: 9 |
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Patchwork
Breaks up an image into squares filled with the predominant color in that area of the image. The filter randomly reduces or increases the tile depth to replicate the highlights and shadows. |
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Stained Glass
Repaints an image as single-colored adjacent cells outlined in the foreground color.
Cell Size: 2 Border Thickness: 1 Light Intensity: 3 |
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Texturizer
Applies a texture you select or create to an image. You can select Brick, Burlap, Canvas or Sand Stone as texture. I use Canvas texture in this sample (default). |
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Feature Resources
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May 15th, 2007 at 9:33 pm
Excellent listing, definitely something for new users to keep a copy of.
May 21st, 2007 at 3:37 am
Propoer guidence is provided here for the freshers,,A uphand for me is this ,,i usually go everday for 1 tutorial for multimedia to make myself an XPert
June 1st, 2007 at 11:46 pm
Its very good for photoshop learners.Good.
June 1st, 2007 at 11:48 pm
I got what i looking for.
June 25th, 2007 at 3:57 am
[…] Water Color Filter by choose menu Filter » Artistic » Watercolor, this will bring up Filter Gallery […]
August 20th, 2007 at 11:29 am
Thank you so much for this resource! I have linked to it for my small Intro to Multimedia class.
October 11th, 2007 at 11:25 am
Hello,
as with most of the contributions to the site it would really be helpful to specify if a contribution applies also to PS Elements.
Thank you
December 6th, 2007 at 3:51 am
I have a question, why the filters (most of them) are not hilight when I tried to use it with a layer. (a psd file) Though it seemed to work fine with jpg.
December 6th, 2007 at 5:14 am
Hi Xav
Do you mean most of the filters are disable?
If so, check your image color mode of the psd file. Most of filters will not be enable if it not in 8 bit/channel RGB color mode.
To change the image color mode use menu Image » Mode and select RGB and 8 bit/channel.
I hope this will useful. If you have additional question please feel free to leave in comment here.
freetime
December 6th, 2007 at 7:58 am
I will check that out, thank you very much.