Filter Menu	Some Examples of Filters	Brief Description of Filter Type
Artistic	Colored Pencil, Cutout, Dry Brush, Neon Glow	These filters are used to apply a specific "art style" to your image. While they can be used in conjunction with other filters or on a selection, they make strong enough statements individually that they are hard to combine. Use these filters on an entire image for the best "intended" results. These filters can only filter images in RGB or Grayscale modes.
Blur	Blur, Gaussian Blur, Motion Blur, Radial Blur	The Blur filters are used to reduce the difference in color between nearby pixels. Depending upon the specific filter, you can select a pixel radius to blur. The Blur filters can all be used for production or for special effects, though some, such as the Radial Blur, tend to be more useful for special effects work.
Brush Strokes [T o p]	Accented Edges, Angled Strokes, Crosshatch	The Brush Strokes filters are part of the Gallery Effects filter sets. None of them work in CMYK or Lab mode. This class of filter is best used to stylize an image or to create texture. All of these filters work wonderfully on a blank image that has had the Add Noise filter run on it. Try this as the start of many exciting textures.
Distort [T o p]	Diffuse Glow, Displace, Glass, Ocean Ripple	The Distort category of filters includes a number of filters that turn your image into a tangle of pixels. They wave, ZigZag, spherize, ripple, displace, and generally mangle the contents of the image for special effects.
Noise [T o p]	Add Noise, Despeckle, Median	The Noise category of filters are used for pre-press as well as for special effects. They are among the most valuable and frequently used filters in Photoshop's native set. The filters both add and remove noise from images.
Pixelate [T o p]	Color Halftone, Crystallize, Fragment	The Pixelate filters work by breaking up the image into clumps of pixels-square blocks (mosaic filter), irregular blocks (Crystallize), random dots (Mezzotint), and so on. They all stylize an image at low settings, and they can destroy the content of the image at higher settings.
Render [T o p]	Clouds, Lens Flare, Lighting Effects	The Render filters create special effects with light. They add clouds, lens flares, and lighting effects. The Render filters are the most computationally intensive filters in Photoshop.
Sharpen [T o p]	Sharpen, Sharpen Edges, Unsharp Mask	The Sharpen filters are production oriented filters that help enhance the focus of the image to improve its quality and to help prepare it for the slight loss of focus (softening) that occurs when it is half-toned prior to printing. The only filter you really need to use is the Unsharp Mask filter, however.
Sketch [T o p]	Charcoal, Chrome, Note Paper, Photocopy	The sketch filters represent a variety of artistic styles resembling hand-drawing an image using limited color palettes. In most cases, the foreground and background colors you set in the Toolbox become the main colors in the image. These filters tend to simplify the shapes in the image, and, as such, are helpful in constructing gross masks for your image. The Sketch filters typically use the logic of either the Find Edges or the Threshold commands in order to work.
Stylize [T o p]	Diffuse, Emboss, Find Edges, Tiles	The Stylize filters are among the most commonly used of the special effects filters. They abstract the image being filtered by changing colors, finding edges, or moving pixels around.
Texture [T o p]	Grain, Mosaic Tiles, Patchwork, Stained Glass	The Texture filters add some type of textures to your image-usually either a grain or an embossing-and all of them work in a blank document to create interesting textures. When applied to a photographic image, the Texture filters abstract and stylize it.
Video [T o p]	De-Interlace, NTSC Colors	The Video filters are used to prepare images for writing to a videotape and to help fix images imported from videotape.
Other [T o p]	Custom, High Pass, Offset, Maximum, Minimum	The "Other" category of filters contains a variety of workhorse filters that do not seem to fit under any other category.