FURTHER ADVENTURES IN SMART FILTERS

Every filter except Liquify and Vanishing Point can be applied as a Smart Filter. To edit their settings, double-click their entry in the Layers palette, and the original filter window appears. Once you’ve finished the composition, editing the Gaussian Blur effect we added in step three can have an interesting result—increasing the Radius to 9 brings in what’s almost a depth of field effect, adding a slight 3D feel to the portrait that wasn’t there before. Increasing it further destroys the solid figure that was the basis of the composition, and lighter areas begin to dissolve away.

Smart Filters can also be blended, just like a layer. Double click the parallel-lines-with-two-triangles icon to the right of the Filter Gallery entries in the Layers palette, and you’ll get a Blending Options window that enables you to control how the filter effect interacts with the pixels below it in the Layers stack. Doing this can radically change the brightness of the Cutout layers in your composition.