Fun with Adobe Photoshop Plugins

If you're a regular Adobe Photoshop user, then you surely know and use the many filters that come with the progam. They add so much pizzazz and interest to your documents, a veritable arsenal of neat effects to impress clients and friends. There are many more filters available than just those that you got when you bought your Photoshop. On the internet, there are sites that will let you download new filters for free. Some of them are pretty darned impressive, others are merely amusing, but its fun to see what is out there for the downloading. Here are a few of my favorites, from a site called "Mehdi,"http://www.mehdiplugins.com/english/kaleidoscope.htm , which has many great free downloads. This is one of many sites, but having used it myself, this one comes highly recommended.

Kaleidoscope

If you've ever used a kaleidoscope before, then this neat little filter will remind you of one. It has three ways to adjust your image, to either mirror, copy or blend the design into a pretty geometric pattern. When you're done, the original photo can be a complex pattern, which when muted, can make great backgrounds for web pages. Make sure to save a copy of your original photo elsewhere, because if you save an image that was distorted with this filter, then the image you started with is gone forever.

Weaver

Weaver takes the colors from your photograph and turns them into a plaid, somewhat tartan pattern. For adding texture to elements of a drawing or for making backgrounds, it's a simple plug-in to use. It allows you to adjust the tightness of the weave and the size of the pattern.

Julia World

This neat little add-on filter lets you make fractals using Photoshop! Pretty cool stuff. It's a little more complicated to use than other plug-ins but is worth fiddling around with and learning. The patterns it can produce are beautiful, and you can change their colors, too.

Grain Natural

This filter can liven up an image or its background by mottling it in a natural sort of way, kind of like marbleizing. You can adjust the size, strength, ration and grain with easy controls. It can improve skies and anything that needs a little texture.

The best way to become comfortable with Photoshop plug-ins is to just play around with them, and see what happens. Make sure to save a copy of the original image, on the side, in case you come up with a filter combination that is good enough to keep. Filters like these let us use our creative reserves, and have a little fun. So try these, and other free plug-ins found on the internet. With a little trial-and-error, you'll come up with some useful techniques to manipulate images with ease.