Filters are the Photopaint equivalents of the filters used in photography to create various effects. As in photography, some filters are merely corrective in that they try to preserve the appearance of the original image while removing some defects, and others are creative in that they radically change the image.
The best way to understand the effects of filters is to experiment with them a bit. Here only a few of the filters, of the many available, will be described.
All of the filters are accessible through the Filters menu.
They are grouped into several general categories, for example, Artistic, Sharpen, Distort, Tiles, and others. Within these categories there is a wide range of types, many of which are editable by you.
Take a look at Super Nova under Light Effects. A dialog will open, making it possible to edit and preview the filter before applying it.
Use the Radius and Spokes sliders to increase and decrease the radius and number of spokes respectively of the super nova. The changes will immediately be displayed in the Preview box to the left.
The X and Y boxes give the horizontal and vertical positions respectively. You can set these precisely by typing new values into the boxes. Alternatively use the mouse to click on a spot anywhere in the Preview image.
The Color box contains the current background color. If you’d like a different color click anywhere in the Color box to open up the "Select Color" dialog. Here you can use the mouse to select a color. This will not affect the current background color. Once you have designed your super nova, click on OK and watch the filter take effect. Depending on the size of the image, it can take anything from a few seconds to a couple of minutes.
Note that whenever a filter is applied it affects only the currently selected - or active - layer.
You can undo the filter by selecting Undo from the Edit menu.
You can apply as many filters as you like to an image, whether on the same layer each time or across some or all of the layers, using many different types of filter.
Taking the above super nova effect, you can add a page curl filter on top. This is another good filter to experiment with and again easily editable.
Select Filters/Artistic/Page Curl to open the "Page Curl" dialog.
In the Parameters box use the sliders to set the Opacity, Ratio, Size and Angle of the curl.
Click the Shadow under curl checkbox on for a shadow effect.
(All of these effects will become obvious to you as you look at the immediate implementation of the changes in the Preview box.)
You can change the color of the curl in the Curl Shading Color box, using either the current foreground or background color, or even a previously saved pattern.
In the Orientation box choose between vertical and horizontal.
Lastly, choose a corner for the curl in the Location box.
Once again watch the changes take place in the Preview box and click on OK once you’re satisfied.
The filter effects will take a few seconds to be implemented. If you decide you don’t like them, just select Undo from the Edit menu and start again.
Note that once you’ve applied a filter you can make some further changes using the Fade … option at the top of the Filters menu. Thus in the case of Page Curl you can select Fade Page Curl to open the "Fade" dialog. In here you can change the opacity and the blend mode of the curl (or whatever was the last filter you applied).
The effect is to fade the filtered image into the original unfiltered image by reducing the opacity from the maximum of 100%. As the slider approaches 0 in the Opacity box the effect of the filter becomes fainter until at 0 the unfiltered image is restored. You can experiment with fading and immediately see the results in the image window.
The options in the Mode box - Normal, Dissolve, Behind, Multiply, and so on - determine how the filter will blend with the existing colors. The modes work pretty much as they do in Blending between layers, with the difference that once you’ve applied Fade the blend becomes permanent (although you can undo a fade or a filter by selecting Undo from the Edit menu).
Click on OK to exit the dialog and apply the Fade, otherwise click on Cancel.
For more examples of filters, see Filters: examples.