Mark S. Johnson Photography

My most requested video tutorial series ever, Maximum Creativity with Filter Forge and Photoshop, is available for immediate download! Featuring 16 indispensable video tutorials and more than 2 1/2 hours of instruction, this series will invigorate your creative juices.

Filter Forge is the most versatile and exciting software that I’ve encountered in a long time. When it’s partnered with Photoshop, there’s simply no limit to your creativity. Unlike other filter products that often meet just one need, such as black and white effects or sharpening, Filter Forge is multi-faceted. It features over 4000 creative photo effects and almost 4500 realistic textures. The number of effects and textures is growing by the day because Filter Forge filters are created not by 10 engineers in a lab, but by thousands of users from around the globe. Because there are so many contributors, Filter Forge is home to several of the most breathtaking and realistic effects that I’ve ever seen. Each of these effects can be applied directly to a photograph or can be combined with the source image in Photoshop to produce astonishing results.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

1. Introduction
2. How to purchase Filter Forge at a big discount
3. Why it makes sense to use Filter Forge as a stand-alone application rather than as a Photoshop plug-in
4. Understanding the Filter Forge interface
5. My favorite Filter Forge effects and textures
6. How to back up your Filter Forge library
7. Blending watercolor with photorealism
8. Adding watercolor and film frames
9. Generating a seamless texture for tiling in Photoshop
10. Creating a starry sky for compositing
11. Generating fog for compositing
12. Producing a texture to use as a distressed mask in Photoshop
13. Old drawing blend effects
14. Mixing a photo with a crosshatch drawing
15. Creating a radial acrylic explosion
16. Adding a grunge frame with a transparent background

Each lesson opens with an explanation of the technique followed by a concrete example. We then journey step-by-step through the creative process from start to finish. Feel free to work along using your own images or you’re welcome to use the provided sample images.

Click here to download the press packet.

In Photoshop Workbench 244, I showed how to create a painterly border using Photoshop’s Refine Edge feature. Recently, as I was applying the Refine Edge technique, it occurred to me that using only the host image to create a border is tremendously limiting. As if struck by a bolt of lightning, I suddenly thought “why not use textures to create a limitless variety of borders, then apply them to whatever photos I choose!” After some experimentation, I determined that this technique simply had to be the subject of my very next Workbench. So here we are. Today, we’ll work with a free texture that I downloaded from CGTextures.com and with an ultraviolet image that I created years ago for my Botanical Dreaming book.

A few days ago, I received Corey Barker’s remarkable book, Down & Dirty Tricks for Designers, in the mail. The book is loaded with inspiring effects, one of which I’d like to share with you today. We’ll impart a unique illustrated appearance to a photo.

Thanks to iStockPhoto.com for providing today’s gorgeous butterfly image and thanks to my new favorite texture source, Flypaper Textures, for providing a stunning texture. If you decide to purchase any of the Flypaper packs, I’ve arranged a special 15% discount for my audience. Just be sure to enter the code “MARKSJ” during checkout.

If you can use a little inspiration today, I’ve got just the ticket. Two years after the release of the first Sherlock Holmes film starring Robert Downey Jr., I finally had the opportunity to sit down and watch it. Although I loved the movie, what really got my pulse pounding were the closing credits. If you’re visually inclined, the credits are pure eye candy. To view them, visit Art of the Title, then tap the “Click to Watch HD” link beneath the topmost image montage.

Part of the allure of the credits is the clever use of motion and transitions. Although we won’t examine motion in this Workbench, we will recreate the classic style of the closing credits using a combination of stunning Filter Forge effects paired with Photoshop’s impressive masking and color correction capabilities. If you’re intrigued by Filter Forge, be sure to download the fully functional free trial, and when you’re ready to buy, enter the discount code “ud4Nswev0ySA” during checkout to receive 40% off your order.

Click here to purchase the Maximum Creativity with Filter Forge video tutorial series for $24.95.

Textures applied to a photograph create the illusion that a two-dimensional scene has tactile, three-dimensional properties. Textures also have the ability to make an image appear as if it was crafted by hand rather than as pixels.

In today’s Workbench, we’ll employ a pair of textures from the Flypaper Textures collection. These are some of the finest textures available anywhere. If you decide to make a purchase after viewing them, enter the code MARKSJ during checkout to receive 15% off your order. We’ll use one of the textures as an image overlay and we’ll apply the other directly to a layer mask in order to add a unique, creative border. If you don’t own the Flypaper textures, consider using textures that you capture with your own camera, or visit a free textures site such as CGTextures.