*A Bit of Fluff You Can Skip*
Deke, here. The Deke who wrote the book, that is. Just a brief note to implore you 
to excuse any typos you may find in this document. I wrote it in a bit of a hurry -- 
big surprise there -- and though I spell checked it, nary an editor has passed so 
much as a jaundiced eye o'er its contents. This is me in the literary raw, as 'twere.

*The Real Intro*
You'll find eight filters in this folder. I created them all in Photoshop's
Filter Factory over the course of a single long and tumultuous evening -- one of 
those wonderfully productive all nighters -- and I believe they serve genuine 
purposes, even the ones with silly names like Color Creep and Ripping Pixels. 
Four of the filters merely provide more convenient access to some of Photoshop's 
existing capabilities; the other four are unique and -- dare I say it? -- actually 
add functionality to this already vast and amazing program. (At least, this is what 
I've managed to con myself into believing. Now if I could only think of a good 
way to con you . . . )

*Installing the Filters*
Installation is the simplest of procedures. Select the eight filters and drag-copy 
them to the Filters folder inside the Plug-Ins folder inside the folder that contains 
the Photoshop application.

In addition to the filters themselves, I advise prospective filter programmers to 
copy the settings files so that you can load the code used to create the filters into 
the Filter Factory dialog box. For many, the code will serve as an important 
learning tool. The occasional power-programmer might even be able to improve on 
my code to make it better.

Oh, and by the way, if Photoshop is running, quit the darn thing and relaunch it. 
The filters only load once at the beginning of each Photoshop session.

*Using the Filters*
Now that you've installed the filters and launched Photoshop, I urge you to open 
an RGB image. Something that you're willing to muck up. Not a picture of your 
new-born daughter or your car or anything you prize. Something disposable, like a 
scan of Howard Stern or Rush Limbaugh. Whatever.

Under the Filter menu, you will now find a new submenu called Tormentia. Inside 
that, you'll find eight filters, as promised. Here's how they work, in order of 
appearance (which happens to be alphabetical):

* Channel Mixer:
This filter allows you to mix the contents of the three channels with each other to 
produce alternative coloring effects. This is the one that Adobe's programmers 
stole from me, as I mentioned in Chapter 5. Sadly, that's the way it is for us 
visionaries. We're just grist for the big corporate mill. Makes you want to cry, 
doesn't it?
When you bring up the Channel Mixer dialog box, you'll find six slider bars. The 
top two affect the red channel, the next two affect the green channel, and the 
bottom two affect the blue channel. To achieve an effect with the filter, you first 
have to drag one of the three Over slider triangles to the right. This increases the 
presence of another channel in the current channel. The three sliders whose names 
include slashes -- like Blue/Green -- determine which channel is being mixed with 
the current channel.
For example, if the Blue/Green slider is set to 0, and you move the Over Red slider 
triangle to 128 -- smack dab in the middle -- it means the blue channel is halfway 
mixed in with the contents of the red channel. Drag the Blue/Green slider all the 
way to the right to mix the green channel with the red channel instead. Somewhere 
in the middle mixes both blue and green channels with red. Use the Over Red 
slider to control the opacity of the foreign channel(s) from transparent, 0, to fully 
opaque, 255.

* Color Creep:
Color Creep multiplies the green channel into the red channel, the blue channel 
into the green channel, and the red channel into the blue channel. You lighten the 
impact of each multiplication by dragging one of the first three slider bars. Wrench 
Red lightens the effect on the red channel, Gnarl Green does the same for the green 
channel, and Bother Blue goes ditto for the blue channel. The fourth slider bar, 
Mix to Taste, allows you to specify the opacity of the Color Creep effect from 0 
for untouched original image to 255 for fully opaque. Any number of interesting 
effects can be created using this filter.

* CrissCross:
Another seemingly boring filter that is incredibly practical, CrissCross adds grid 
lines to your image. Use the Horizontal and Vertical sliders to determine the 
frequency of the grid lines. Keep in mind, the numbers on the sliders do *not* 
equate to the number of grid lines. Rather, you drag the slider triangle to the right 
in order to introduce grid lines like folds in a collapsing curtain. (Mathematically, 
the analogy is surprisingly accurate.) Horizontal and Vertical values of 0 apiece 
result in one horizontal line and one vertical line dividing the image into exact 
quarters (or as exact as possible -- e.g., one quadrant may a pixel wider than 
another). Values of 129 apiece divide the image into 1/16ths. A value of 255 
creates one grid line every other pixel.
The Opacity slider bar determines the opacity of the grid lines. Use the Red, Green, 
and Blue sliders to specify the color of the lines. Red, Green, and Blue values of 
255 apiece, for example, result in white lines. (I would have preferred to simply 
apply the current foreground color to the grid lines, but the Filter Factory provides 
no foreground or background color variable.)
Tip: Apply this filter to a transparent layer. This way, you can turn the grid on and 
off without affecting the underlying image itself.

* Full Channel Press:
Though it produces a very different effect, the code for this filter is nearly exactly 
like the Color Creep. The only different is that instead of multiplying one channel 
by another, Full Channel Press multiples the color by itself. As with Color Creep, 
you drag the triangles in the first three sliders -- cleverly named Bench Red, Jerk 
Green, and Pump Blue -- to the right to lighten the effect on each channel. The Gym 
Mix slider determines the opacity of the new channels over the originals.

* Noise Blaster:
Like the CrissCross filter, Noise Blaster is unlike anything offered by Photoshop. 
Rather than adding a random coating of noise like the Add Noise filter, Noise 
Blaster randomly distributes colors that already exist in specified directions. The 
result is a directional noise effect that has much the same relationship to Add 
Noise as Motion Blur has to the standard Blur command.
The most important options inside the Noise Blaster dialog box are the last two 
sliders, Horiz. (L/R) and Vert. (D/U). (The L/R stands for left/right; D/U stands for 
down/up.) A value of 128 for either slider indicates no movement. Drag the Horiz. 
(L/R) triangle to the right to specify the distance that pixels can jump rightward 
from their original positions; drag it to the left to make the pixels jumps leftward. 
Drag the Vert. (D/U) slider to the left to move the pixels down; move it to the 
right to move them upward.
Small values create randomized edges, much like a directional Diffuse filter; larger 
values create trails; and very large values blow the image apart. Meanwhile, you 
can control the opacity of the effect on each channel using the Red Tint, Green 
Tint, and Blue Tint options.

* Ripping Pixels:
Another previously unavailable noise filter, Ripping Pixels generates a random 
brightness value between like pixels in two color channels and places that value 
in the third channel. The slider bars allow you to vary the opacity of the effects. 
For example, if you set the Red Noise slider to 255, the Ripping Pixels filter 
would calculate a random average between each like pixel in the green and blue 
channels and place it in the red channel at full opacity. The wonderful thing about 
this filter is that even with all three sliders set to their highest settings, Ripping 
Pixels does not ruin the detail in the image, but rather integrates the detail into the 
noise.

*Rotator:
This filter rotates the red, green, and blue channels independently. You can also 
create a protrusion in the center of the image using the Distorto slider. I examine 
this filter in detail inside the book, so if you want more information, check out 
Chapter 17. 

* SuperInvert:
You can already invert channels by switching the Output Levels slider triangles in 
the Levels dialog box for each of the three color channels, but since lots of folks 
don't know about this option or are a little bit overwhelmed by all the other stuff 
that the Levels command can do, I figured I'd spin this extremely useful function 
off into its own, stripped down environment -- a.k.a., the SuperInvert filter.
The SuperInvert dialog box provides three slider bars, Red, Green, and Blue. Each 
one remaps each brightness value in the channel to its exact opposite over the 
length of the slider. Light pixels incrementally darken and dark ones lighten as you 
drag the slider bar to the right. By 129, all pixels in the channel have turned to 
gray. As you drag to higher values, the pixels reemerge to form a partially inverted 
image. By 255, the channel is fully inverted.

*Epilogue*
Oh, yeah. right. A ReadMe file like this deserves an epilogue. I don't think so. Just 
go use the filters and have fun. And if you don't like them, open up the settings 
files and turn them into something better.

*Copyright*
Incidentally, the filters are copyrighted to me, as in Copyright ©1998 Deke 
McClelland. I'd prefer if you didn't copy the filters or any of the settings files for 
your friends, loved ones, arch enemies, or complete strangers. I consider the 
collection to be an integral part of the book, one the many things that your $49.95 
buys.