The Filter Gallery

The Filter Gallery allows you to choose from a select group of filter effects and apply several of them to an image at once. You can access the Filter Gallery by choosing it from the Filter menu or by choosing any filter that is handled by the gallery interface, such as the Artistic, Brush Strokes, or Sketch subsets. The Filter Gallery dialog box is made up of four sections: a preview area with zoom controls, a filter menu list (complete with descriptive thumbnails for every effect), a dynamic filter settings area, and a list of applied effect layers. Every time you open the Filter Gallery, a single effect layer is automatically created for you. Adding, deleting, and selecting effect layers in the Filter Gallery is similar to working with layers in the Layers palette. To add an effect, you must first create an effect layer by clicking the Create New Effect Layer icon at the bottom of the dialog box. Doing so duplicates the currently selected layer and positions it at the top of the effect layer stack. You can select an effect layer by clicking it, just as you would in the Layers palette; the only difference is that you can select only one effect layer at a time. The currently active effect layer is always highlighted gray. To delete an effect layer, select it from the stack and then click the trash icon at the bottom of the dialog. Note that you cannot drag an effect layer to the trash as you can when deleting layers in the Layers palette.