I was all ready to go to One Voice and Collabor88 the other night and could not get in. They were both full!!! Rather than complain, though, I decided to check out the brand new Pixel Bean Coffeehouse after its recent remodel. I had planned to explore a few sims, maybe do some grid-hopping but when I got to the Bean, I was captivated by its charm and decided to shoot my outfit there. I used the sits that were in the adorable {what next} furnishing, animated sits that had me shooting tons of snaps trying to capture the right moment mid-movement. One thing led to another and I ended up playing around with filters in Filter Forge, a fun little application that I got a long time ago. I noticed it has a 60% off sale until the end of July so I thought I might mention it. The nice thing about it is that once you have the application, all the filters are free even with the least expensive option. I don’t do enough photo editing to justify the professional edition, so you don’t have to choose the most expensive to get a lot out of the application. I thought you might like to see what fun things filters can do. In these pictures,the only editing, other than cropping is using one filter. For example, for this photo I used Artificial Lighting.

I think this shows why the Pixel Bean Coffeehouse inspired a picture shooting spree. The filter I used for this is called HDRtist.

I was casually dressed, perfect for hanging out at the dock. I loved the abstract koi in the water. Bright suggestions of color that has the realism of imprecision. The shorts are from Baiastice, the top from Leverocci and the shoes from SHI. I picked them up at Collabor88 awhile back and they are cute, fun and full of options to change the color and pattern of the tongue. The filter I used for this picture is Technicolor Process (2 Strip).

One of my favorite filters to play with is Photoygraphy which gives you the look of old photos that have sun damage or pictures taken with cameras with a bit of light leak. The damaged look and the flares of light are fun to apply.

You know, I got this hair as a Lelutka group gift and I wear it a lot. I love its perky style. It’s so sassy. Thankfully for you, it is available for sale at Lelutka. The jewelry is from Kunglers, known for their bold organic style. The filter effect I am using is Lomo that simulates the low-fi effects of lomography, a bit of a cult that grew up around the LOMO Kompakt Avtomat camera produced by the Soviets years ago.

The skin is PXL Creations Kate – always a favorite for me. The filter I used is called House of SpaceRay’s Lightbox. The fun thing to do with filters, besides trying tons of them is when you try one, click on the settings tab to play around with that. Then, you can also click a button called next variant and run through all sorts of different iterations of the filter with random changes in the settings. I can be wickedly entertaining.

As you can see there are lots of options that you can use to fine tune the filter’s effects, but I get a kick out of hitting the next variation button and seeing what pops up.