In Praise of Photoshop Filters

The paint tube was invented in 1841

Photoshop 1.0 was released in 1990

The other day I stumbled on to a dog art site that offered both digital and acrylic dog portraits. The thing that struck me as odd is that the site claimed to use "no Photoshop filters". I found this odd as both their acrylic and their digital work looked very filter oriented. Let me also say that the work was not half bad at all. The perplexing issue was why this artist felt the need to disavow any use of Photoshop filters. If the site's claim is true then this digital artist is missing out on some of Photoshop's strongest tools.

Here at Art Paw we use Photoshop filters in all of our works, even the most heavily painted piece is going to have some filter somewhere beneath the smudgy wacom paint layers. We do like to say that we do not rely on filters alone to achieve our results, and so we too may be guilty of down-playing the importance of filters. A digital artist that is good with filters and has learned the art of combining several filters, and adjusting their opacity to achieve spectacular results should not be ashamed of their knowledge, or feel that it is somehow inferior to traditional painting. I am blessed to have a number of traditional artist friends and associates that seem to respect my work, and digital art in general. I do realize though that there will always be "purists" that feel that Photoshop and digital art is in some way cheating. I would have to pause and ask a painter that considers themselves a purist if they are indeed mixing and grinding their pigments to create their own paints? I am sure that when commercial paints in little shiny metal tubes came onto the market place there were probably some old hold-outs that swore up and down that "true artists" will always mix their own pigments the old fashion way. I see the computer in much the same way as commercial "tubed" paint. It is a tool, just one more tool for an artist to explore.