Image Effects and Filters

IconCool Editor is a powerful icon editor to edit icons, cursors and web graphics. It comes with all the functions for creating and editing ICO, CUR, ANI, ICL, GIF, JPG, BMP, EMF, WMF, TGA and WBMP image files. In addition, it offers more than 50 image filters, including Blurring, Sharpening, Embossing, Diffusing, Color Balance... as well as 20 image effects, including Linear Gradient, Redial Gradient, Rectangular Gradient, Wave, 3D Shadow, 3D Button, Text Gradient Effects, Noise, Arbitrary Rotation and more. IconCool Editor is also a smart image capturing tool can be used to capture images of various sizes from desktop or any other software. You can convert images in 25 formats to icons, You can extract icons from EXE, DLL, ICL, OCX or any other files and then edit or re-save them. In addition, it offers a 100-level Undo/Redo function, support for non-standard icons sizes and more. Supports XP and Vista icons.

AKVIS ArtSuite is a Photoshop compatible plug-in that enables you to add frames and effects to your photos. The inventory of effects consists of several dozen picture frame styles and 4 color effects that allow for color shifting, black&white conversion, channel mixing and texture effects. Each effect can be adjusted and customized to your liking.

PhotoChances Lab is an image effects editor and slideshow viewer that can automatically apply a series of random visual effects to your images and run them as slideshow or screensaver. The program includes a visual effects editor that allows you to apply a variety of image effects to your photos, with the option to save the effect settings as presets for the slideshow, or save the edited images for other uses. Other features include options to configure the slide duration, effects to be used, background music and more. The program can also be configured to run the slideshow as your default screensaver.

A Photoshop compatible plugin to transform your images into photographs and films of the old days. You can add grain, shade the images into a monochrome palette, defocus, brighten or darken the edges, add configurable scratches, hairs and spots of dust and fat and more.

AKVIS SmartMask is a Photoshop compatible plug-in that enables you to easily make complex selections from photos in order to mask out people and objects. You can simply draw a rough outline with the blue pencil inside the objects you want to select, and then use the red pencil to to mark the background area. The program uses these markings to analyze the image and remove the background area. You can further fine-tune the mask to correct fine details, preview the mask on different background and then save it as a new layer in your project. Produces very good results with minimum efforts.

AKVIS Retoucher is a Photoshop compatible plugin that can help you restore images, remove scratches, unwanted texts and dates, dust and more. The plugin works with a selection in your Photoshop compatible image editor and offers an automatic process that uses intelligent cloning methods to cover the selected areas, so that they blend into the rest of the image. It is easy to use, and works very well on most image defects. It may require the use of additional Photoshop brushes and techniques in order to add the finishing touches.

FaceMorpher Multi is a morphing tool, specifically designed to creates facial morphing effects. It enables you to transform multiple faces using an animated morph process that can be saved as Flash movie, AVI video, animated GIF or series of JPG images. Unlike most other morphing tools, FaceMorpher Multi is limited to casual facial morphs and does not provide you with any advanced control or options. It can automatically assign pre-configured morph points for most standard facial points and allows for minor fine-tuning if needed.

ImageElements Photomontage enables you to create a montage style effect from a single picture photo by splitting it into multiple, layered segments that resemble the original image (or a portion of it). You can choose between automated and manual layouts, apply shadow effects, adjust the outline, gap and tilt settings, and save the finished montage as a new image in several popular image formats.

AKVIS Sketch enables you to convert your photos into pencil/charcoal sketches or watercolor drawings. It provides adjustable sliders that allow you to customize the effects and stroke types and create a variety of image styles by mixing watercolors and charcoal along with color intensity and other settings. When used with Photoshop, AKVIS Sketch also supports batch processing. Unfortunately, the program does not provide any useful presets to get you started, so it may require a lengthy process of hit-and-miss to achieve the desired results. The download includes a standalone version, and a Photoshop compatible plug-in version.

Red Eye Pilot is an easy to use tool to remove the Red Eye effect from your digital photos with just a few of clicks and no experience required. Simply click on the red eye, and in some cases it will instantly apply a proper correction. You can further fine-tune the results by manually adjusting the pupil area and brightness. We found that most of our test images only produced minimal correction without manual tuning. All changes can be previewed in real-time. Red Eye Pilot can be used standalone or as Photoshop plug-in.

DCE AutoEnhance is a digital photo enhancer and batch processor, that enables you to enhance and/or correct digital images that may have been over or underexposed, have poor color quality or other cosmetic errors. It provides a series of corrections that can be previewed and optionally applied or customized. You can also remove noise, resize images, add a text watermark, remove color cast, apply virtual photo filters and more. For many pictures the default settings require no or little adjustment and advanced users can further customize the effects using the advanced mode interface. DCE AutoEnhance will not allow to overwrite your original images, so it is safe to use and experiment without taking a chance to ruin your valuable pictures.

Colorator is a simple tool that allows you to replace or remove specific colors from an image. The program can be useful to highlight certain color characteristics by combining a B&W effect with a dominating color (e.g. blue eyes, colorful flowers) from the original, to change the color of objects or to create other artistic variations. The results are shown in a real-time preview window.

TexToPix enables you to convert photos into Text/ASCII art. You can specify a custom or random text to be used as a filler, select colored or b/w font characters of your choice and the program will generate an image that, when viewed from a distance, resembles your original picture, and shows readable text when viewed up close. There are several presets and settings that allow you to customize the settings and you can preview the result as you go. The resulting image can be saved as a raster image file or as vector based metafile.

Recomposit is a digital matting and composition tool, that enables you to replace backgrounds in photos. It can work in chroma key mode (Bluescreen) or based on a manual inside/outside edge selection by the user that separates the subject from the background. The program works well, especially with chroma key backgrounds, but requires a lot of patience since interface is slow and not very intuitive.

ImageElements Motivational Poster Maker enables you to create create your own motivational or posters, using an image and text of your choice. The program automatically applies a popular poster style, but you can also customize the frame, background and font settings to create a unique poster style. The finished design can be printed or saved in popular image formats.

IE Picture Framer is a simple tool to add virtual picture frames to your digital images. You can select from several frame styles (20 more in the registered version) and optionally add a drop shadow effect as well. The result can be copied to the clipboard or saved as new image.

AKVIS LightShop is a Photoshop compatible plug-in that enables you to add a variety of light effects to your images. It includes several presets (mostly abstract effects) that can be customized, or you can create new light effects from scratch, using the provided effects editor.

AKVIS Enhancer is a Photoshop compatible plug-in that helps you improve your images by improving textures and revealing fine details. It can improve appearance of underexposed, overexposed and mid-tone areas of a photo without manipulating exposure settings. It achieves this by intensifying color transitions between pixels, rather than overall brightness or contrast adjustments. AKVIS Enhancer allows you to customize the intensity of the manipulation, as well as specific adjustments. We have seen some very good results, even images that looked fine before had some significant improvements in overall details and appearance.

AKVIS Chameleon enables you to create smooth image collages by automatically adjusting the inserted objects to the target image color range. The pasted selection does not need to be overly precise, just paste it and then run Chameleon to make the adjustments. It works great in some cases, but not as well in others. Unfortunately there are no options to manipulate the results or settings - what you see is what you get, no options to fine-tune. This makes it very easy to use, but also severely limits the flexibility. Requires Photoshop or PS Elements for best results.

Caricature Studio enables you to create funny caricatures from your photos. It combines image morphing and warping with the option to add speech bubbles, text and clipart to the photo. Other features include chromakey green screen suppport, image resizing and cropping, as well as a cartoon-like effect that can be applied to the image to make it look more like a drawing than a photo. The program is easy to use and does not require any technical or graphical experiences.

Softener is a Photoshop plug-in lets you easily apply dreamy and glossy soft focus effect to your images. The interface provides full control over radius, opacity, blend and luminosity. It s ideal for creating glamor photographs or giving your images a warm and subtle glow. Softener comes with a range of presets, or you can save your own.

NVR BorderMania Pro is a set of plugin filters for Adobe Photoshop and other graphics programs including JASC Paint Shop Pro and Corel Photo-Paint. NVR BorderMania Pro is distributed free of charge for a 30 day evaluation period, after which some of the features require a license fee for continued use. The Pro features include support for multiple color modes, advanced image preview, control setting history list and anti-aliasing. The remaining features are identical to the original BorderMania 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 features, and like those earlier versions may be used free of charge indefinitely.

DxO FilmPack enables you to apply the look and feel of traditional film photos to your digital images. It can simulate more than 20 film types including Kodachrome, Tri-X, Velvia and others. In addition, you can adjust contrast, saturation and toning based on several presets, and adjust the intensity of digitally simulated film grain effects based on popular film brands.

FirmTools RedEyeBot is a time-saving red-eye removal tool that can search through your image folders and automatically find and remove red-eye effects from your photos without the need for manual editing. It offers a semi-automatic mode that lets you compare the original and corrected image side by side before applying the changes, as well as a built-in viewer that features interactive red-eye detection for fine-tuning and manual corrections.

AmphiSoft Photo Sharpen is a Photoshop, Paintshop Pro etc. compatible plug-in that offers advanced image sharpening without creating visible halos. It incorporates edge sharpening and general sharpening algorithms with a choice of aggressive or gentle application and customizable radius and intensity settings. AmphiSoft Photo Sharpen works with 8 bit and 16 bit RGB, Greyscale and Lab images. The demo version allows you to preview the sharpening results but you cannot apply them to the image.

AmphiSoft Plug-in Filters includes 10 Photoshop compatible plug-in filters for special effects like 3D-like metallic looks, motion blur, Xylograph and others. A dialog provides full control over all effect settings.

Redeye AutoRemover uses Artificial Intelligence to automatically detect and remove red-eye effects from your digital images. You simply load a photo, click a button and the red-eye effect is gone. For tricky cases, the program also offers a semi-automatic detection that allows you to select the region to be corrected.

Color Pilot turns average pictures into great ones. easily perform color balance and brightness correction, refresh your old photos, replace faded colors with a "fresh look" and much more. The additional Panorama function will allow you to stitch your images for panorama effects. The program comes with several "lean back and watch" tutorials that teach you all the details in an easy to understand on-screen simulation.

Intocartoon Professional Edition eanbles you to convert your photos into cartoon-style drawings or black and white sketches. You can adjust the drawing style and detail to include and then add a coloring layer based on the original image colors. This layer can also be adjusted to achieve the desired effect. There are no presets available, so you need to play with the control sliders and use the preview as a guidance until you achieve the desired effect. Intocartoon also provides standard drawing tools that you can use to further enhance the image or to add speech bubbles. The image can then be exported to JPG, BMP or proprietary P2C format.

Professor Franklin`s Instant Photo Effects enables you to apply hundreds of different effects to your images, including frames, brushed edges, lighting effects, page curls, photo filters, or any combination of the above. Just load your photo into the program and select from the available categories to preview and apply selected effects to your image. The result can be saved in popular image formats, send by email (resized) or printed.

Umatrix Plug-in is a Photoshop compatible synthesizer of geometric abstractions, that enables you to create composite images by layering various 3d objects. Depending on your settings, resulting image will have some core similarities with the original, but look like a work of abstract art. You can customize the results by changing various settings and also generate random settings and variations. Umatrix Plug-in works with graphics editors that support Photoshop plug-ins.

Perfectum plugin is a Photoshop compatible plug-in that enables you to quickly remove digital noise, enhance surface smoothness and improve edge antialiasing without the need to make any manual adjustments. The program works great for images that were taken with high ISO settings or enlarged photos that have been degraded during the upsizing process.

Sketch Master is a Photoshop compatible plug-in to create realistic looking hand-drawings derived from photos. It enables you to simulate various drawing styles and tools such as lead pencil, ink-pencil, crayon, charcoal, airbrush, and others, and customize the effects to your likings. It offers three layers, each with separate settings to produce effects of stylized fine-arts on all sorts of surfaces including water paper, squared paper, laid paper, canvas, leather, and others.

AV Bros. Puzzle Pro 2.0 is a plug-in (8bf) for Adobe Photoshop and compatible applications (PaintShop, Macromedia Fireworks, Ulead etc). It allows you to create advanced jig-saw puzzle effects, using various effects, custom shapes and more. You can use the included splitter shapes, or create your own as well. The split image pieces and shapes can be saved individually in .EPS or .AI formats. Additional features include RGB, CMYK and Grayscale image, hiding pieces, randomizing knots and more.

AV Bros. Page Curl Pro is a Photoshop and compatible plug-in, that allows you to apply advanced curl and fold effects to your images. It provides full control over every aspect of the effect, with options to use 3D rotations and perspective distortions to the image, apply shadow and light conditions, texturize, transparency and much more. All changes can be previewed in real-time and the settings can be saved to quickly apply them to other images. AV Bros. Page Curl Pro leaves nothing to be desired when it comes to image curling.

Light Artist enables you to add realistic light effects to your digital images. You can position multiple light sources and types with different colors and intensity to achieve a variety of effects from morning glow, sunrise/sunset, and more. You can also use it to correct harsh lightning in pictures or to turn a bright photo into a more softly lit composition.

CONTORT is a fun program for distorting pictures and producing surreal effects. Try it with a close-up human portrait of a friend or family. The (contorting) of the image takes place in selectable rectangular zones which can be sized and positioned. Contorting here means explosion, implosion, nudging and twisting using a stretchable rubber mat principle. Contrast/brightness/gamma adjustments, rotation and blushing (not airbrushing) in the same style of rectangular zones are all possible. Other features include merging of pictures, pixel shuffling and recursion to produce echoing effects.

EyeBatch is a powerful and intuitive batch image processor. The program supports most popular image formats as well as full transparency and EXIF, and comes with over 50 functions built in - including resizing, converting, text and image overlays (watermarking), image slicing, autocrop, color levels, and much more. You can preview each of the effects and see what your original image will like like before you apply any of them. EyeBatch may be used for single or multiple image processing (batch processing). Additional features include conditional IF statements,Enhanced text watermarking, Input filtering and more. The program is perfect for preparing images for the web and making thumbnails. It has a great interface and is suited for pros as well as beginners.

Gertrudis Pro lets you transform your photos into an original piece of digital art using various painting techniques. It displays the photo and art canvas side-by-side and a synchronized paint brush allows you to paint the canvas using the selected paint tools and your own style of brush strokes. Gertrudis automatically performs a topological analysis of the image content and builds a matrix of flow direction vectors, that can assist you in the process. The result can be saved in JPG, BMP and TIF format or exported to Postscript. The demo version allows you to work with 8 sample images, you cannot load your own photos.

AutoImager is a full-featured batch image processing and conversion application. The program is easy-to-use and thanks to it s interface-driven concept, you dont have to understand programming or even scripting in order to perform the advanced batch conversion and processing tasks. It offers support for more than 90 image formats, as well as an extensive array of customizable image enhancement, editing, and processing operations. AutoImager also offers complete command-line support with more than 125 configurable command-line choices. It offers dozens of processing filters, including auto-trim, resize, resample, crop, brightness, contrast, unsharp mask and many others. All effects can be adjusted and previewed in a before/after display before they are processed.

LunarCell is a Photoshop compatible plugin that allows you to create instant planets. Create fractal, reality-based, or just strange worlds in seconds. It includes real clouds downloaded from weather satellites and comes with dozens of presets, and you can design your own planets too. LunarCell also generates maps for 3D animation, fantasy mapmaking, and QuickTime 5 cubic VR.

STOIK Deformer allows you to create some really cool and realistic image transformations and animations in real time. It comes with a collection of visual deformation tools, including hooks, hammers, drills, brushes and several others that can be easily applied to your image. You can choose to create a new, deformed image, or create a filmstrip that allows you to create an animation that shows the entire deformation process, which can then be converted to AVI, file sequence or animated GIF. 28 additional real-time deformation tools. The program includes 28 deformation tools and supports different output resolutions, preview and more. Unfortunately the interface is a (failed) attempt to make it more user-friendly, we found it to be confusing and awkward to work with - instead of standard Windows functionality, it offers mostly abstract icons, scattered over multiple dialogs and pages. Despite the poor interface, Deformer is a lot of fun and lets you produce very nice results, without any experience needed.