Can I find an effect if I only know it's name and creator?

[nbkbaa7 Profile]

Can I find an effect if I only know it's name and creator?

[eadams Profile]

Can I find an effect if I only know it's name and creator?

In my experience the answer is: Sometimes you can and sometimes you can't

If you load an image, open the Effect Gallery and search for the name of an effect or an author, you will find most effects.

Some effects seem to be discoverable only if an appropriate area has been defined with the Select Area tool. I notice this behavior with skies.

For example, if you load an image, open the Effects Gallery and search for a sky (e.g. Sky - orange), you will get the error message "No effects found for ..."

But if you use the Select Area tool to select a sky in the image first and then make a search, you will find all the effects that have been tagged as being skies by their authors.

I think this behavior of the search engine was implemented so that end users only find the most appropriate effects for their images. However, sometimes this behavior is unwanted and restricts the user's ability to find particular effects that he may want to use in unusual circumstances.

[admin]

The reason we can't show an effect if it requires a selection and the selection doesn't exist, is that there is no way for the software to work out what the effect looks like on the users picture. e.g. it can't replace the sky if it doesn't know which pixels are sky: you'd end up with sky appearing in the wrong places! We tried showing users the effect on a different picture, and other placeholders that asked them to define the sky in their image to see the effect in action, but that confused new users to the software who couldn't understand why their image couldn't show the effect.

Hope that helps understand!

Tony

[eadams Profile]

That makes sense, Tony, thanks.