With a shiny new computer one of the minor chores this week has been rebuilding my collection of filters and handy-dandy favourite tools. I love Photoshop, but another graphics programme I’ve used for more than 10 years is IrfanView , a deceptively simple image manipulator, useful to quickly resize or rename a folder’s worth of pictures, do quick touchups and cropping on individual pictures, and any number of other essential tasks. It’s entirely free – but worthy of a Paypal donation.
Irfan even lets you run 8bf filters. I’ve been rediscovering some old-favourite pattern-makers, the sort of things I use to make background textures and patterns to incorporate into more elaborate Photohshop projects. The free Mehdi plugins include some lovely effects – today’s images are the result of running some very ordinary pictures (of my first tomatoes of the season, and a fly that happened to land near them) through the Kaleidoscope filter. It’s fun to play on the border between recognisable-but-strange and completely-abstract.
A Little Art 