Creative Filtering
If I have a problem with filters, it's this: like many things that are supposed
to expand our horizons - television, multimedia CD-ROM, the Internet etc.
- the reality is if you supply people with easy to use, easily digestible
information, instead of exploring more, they use it to work less.
I was talking to an art teacher from my school about this and he mentioned
what he liked to call the 'Encarta' effect: if a teacher requests the students
to write an essay on Van Gogh, for example, half the kids will lazily reach
for their CD-ROM encyclopedia and all end up quoting from identical references.
Now they could discover a broader if not mind boggling range of alternative
primary sources via the Internet, but just as with going down the library,
that would require too much effort sifting through the data.These are the
views of a teacher who is all in favor of students using computers, but not
in a way that leads to homogeneity of thought and expression. The same thing
can be said about the misuse of filters. Photoshop should be seen as more
than a glorified electronic 'paint by numbers' kit. Even the esteemed Kai
Krause (the man who gave us Kai's Power Tools) was heard to offer tongue
in cheek apology for inflicting the ubiquitous Page Curl filter upon the
world. With a little imagination, one can cumulatively combine filters and
create all sorts of interesting new textures and image effects.
From "Adobe Photoshop 6.0 for Photographers" by Martin Evening