Distorting for Fun in Photoshop

With one startling exception, Photoshop’s Distortion filters twist, turn, and bend your images in surprising ways, turning ordinary objects into wavy images, pinched shapes, and bloated spheres.
The single exception? The Diffuse Glow filter (which you access by choosing Filter➪Distort➪Diffuse Glow) distorts images only to the extent that it imbues them with a soft, romantic, fuzzy look that can make the sharpest image look positively ethereal. I’ve never figured out why Adobe dumped this useful filter in the Distort submenu, but there it is. Other filters of this ilk can produce wavy images, add pond ripples, pinch images, or transform them into spheres.
Choose Filter-->Distort-->Glass to play with the Glass filter, which can do the following to your images:
- Add a glass block texture
- Add a canvas texture
- Create frosted-glass fuzziness
- Break up your image with tiny lenses

Don’t like any of Photoshop’s textures? No biggie, you can also load your own texture. Click the Texture pop-up menu (the right-pointing arrow) and choose Load Texture.