How To Use Photoshop Filters

1- Open up Photoshop And select your image.

2-Once your image is in your workspace right click on the background image in the layers palette.

3- Select duplicate background and a new box will appear. Name your background copy and click OK

4- Go to Filter > Filter Gallery. ( note that if it is not highlighted you may need to use 8 bit mode. to do this Image > mode> 8 bit. The filter gallery will now appear in the filter options.)

5- A new window will appear. This has all the different filters in it available to you. You can see them on the right in different folders.

6-Click on any of the different filter folders and select a filter. you will see a preview of the filter on your image on the left. You can zoom in and out of your image on the bottom left. You can also adjust the filter on the right with the different toggles.

7- There is also a large selection of black and white filters. These can be quite effective when used with the blending mode option on your layers palette.

To do this select a black and white filter you like. Click OK.

8- The filter will now apply on the background copy you created.

9- Select blend modes on your layers palette. Select a blend mode.(I have selected soft light). You will now see that the black and white filter has become colour with the effect of the black and white filter. This process of using the filters and blending modes together is similar to using overlays.

10-You can also adjust the opacity of the blend mode which will affect the filter also to make the effect more subtle.

11- You can also use the blend modes with colour filters to get different effects.

12- Here I have selected a colour filter. As you can see it has made a mosaic effect on the image. its a cool effect but I have lost a lot of definition from the image.

12- By selecting the filter then going to blending mode I can create that mosaic effect but make it more subtle so I do not loose all of the definition in my image.

13-And to make it even more subtle you can again change the opacity to lessen the effect even more.

14- The choices are endless with the filter gallery and other filters in Photoshop. If you team them up with the blending mode option as well you can create many unique images.

Don't forget that you can also add 3rd party filters in photoshop as well to create your own unique look. Check outDesign Bundles for some amazing Photoshop filters for your projects.