Filter Forge is a high-end plugin for Adobe Photoshop allowing computer artists to build their own filters – seamless textures, visual effects, distortions, patterns, backgrounds, frames, and more. The key features of Filter Forge include a visual filter editor and a free online library of user-created filters to which anyone can contribute. Filter Forge can work as a Photoshop plugin or a standalone application.
Filter Forge can produce a wide range of textures and effects which include organic structures, metallic and rocky surfaces, distortions, abstract textures, repeating patterns, color corrections, and more. All filters are adjustable and editable, seamlessly tiled, resolution-independent, and support real-world HDRI lighting. Also, filters can automatically generate diffuse, specular, bump, and normal maps, which makes Filter Forge an essential tool for artists creating 3D models and environments, architectural visualization and high-end game content.
The key feature of Filter Forge is the Filter Editor, a visual node-based environment allowing users to build custom filters without writing a single line of code. Filters are assembled by connecting components into a network to combine their effects. Components include familiar operations such as blurs, gradients, color adjustments, distortions, and blending. For end-users, the filter internals are hidden behind a simple set of filter controls – anyone can immediately benefit from filters without knowing what is inside them.
Filter Forge's rendering engine takes full advantage of multi-core processors – for example, a dual-core processor can speed the rendering up to 96%. A high-precision floating-point rendering pipeline allows Filter Forge to support 16- and 32-bit image modes and eliminates unwanted artifacts such as color banding. Filter Forge's custom memory manager allows it to render large bitmaps – up to 65536x65536 pixels – even on moderate amounts of RAM.