Stylize filters in Photoshop

Stylize filters

The Stylize filters (Filter > Stylize) produce a painted or impressionistic effect on a selection by displacing pixels and by finding and heightening contrast in an image. After using filters like Find Edges and Trace Contour that highlight edges, you can apply the Invert command to outline the edges of a color image with colored lines or to outline the edges of a grayscale image with white lines.

Diffuse

Shuffles pixels in a selection to make the selection look less focused according to the selected option: Normal moves pixels randomly, ignoring color values; Darken Only replaces light pixels with darker pixels; and Lighten Only replaces dark pixels with lighter pixels. Anisotropic shuffles pixels in the direction of the least change in color.

Emboss

Makes a selection appear raised or stamped by converting its fill color to gray and tracing the edges with the original fill color. Options include an embossing angle (from -360° to lower (stamp) the surface, to +360° to raise the surface), height, and a percentage (1% to 500%) for the amount of color within the selection. To retain color and detail when embossing, use the Fade command after applying the Emboss filter.

Extrude

Gives a 3D texture to a selection or layer.

Find Edges

Identifies the areas of the image with significant transitions and emphasizes the edges. Like the Trace Counter filter, Find Edges outlines the edges of an image with dark lines against a white background and is useful for creating a border around an image.

Glowing Edges

Identifies the edges of color and adds a neon-like glow to them.

Solarize

Blends a negative and a positive image--similar to exposing a photographic print briefly to light during development.

Tiles

Breaks up an image into a series of tiles, off-setting the selection from its original position. You can choose one of the following to fill the area between the tiles: the background color, the foreground color, a reverse version of the image, or an unaltered version of the image, which puts the tiled version on top of the original and reveals part of the original image underneath the tiled edges.

Trace Contour

Finds the transitions of major brightness areas and thinly outlines them for each color channel for an effect similar to the lines in a contour map.

Wind

This creates tiny horizontal lines in the image to simulate a wind effect. Methods include Wind; Blast, for a more dramatic wind effect; and Stagger, which offsets the wind lines in the image.