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Filter Forge 2.0 Beta

We have released the long-anticipated beta of Filter Forge 2.0. Try the beta to explore the new possibilities offered by the new powerful Filter Forge and take your creativity to the next level! The beta is a 30-day fully functional trial of Filter Forge Professional 2.0. To use the beta beyond the trial time, buy Filter Forge 1.0 and get a free key for the 2.0 beta. This is the second stage of the beta test, with more stages to come:

• Download Filter Forge 2.0 Beta for Windows (35.5 MB)
• Download Filter Forge 2.0 Beta for Mac (52.6 MB)

New Features Added in Beta Stage 2

Shadows via Ambient Occlusion

Filter Forge 2.0 takes you beyond the photorealism barrier with its fast and easy-to-use Ambient Occlusion. It's mathematically accurate, it's seamless, and it dramatically enhances the level of realism by calculating how much environmental light can reach a certain point of a surface and illuminating that point accordingly. Read More...

Point/Area Lights

Filter Forge 2.0 lets you create any number of point or area lights that allow you to specify how exactly you want your texture to be lit. You can set up almost any lighting you want – create miltiple light sources, make shadows darker by setting negative lights, use 360-degree rotation, and much more. Read More...

New Lighting Options

We have completely redesigned the Lighting tab to provide an easier access to the new lightning options. The new interface allows you to adjust all the lighting elements – HDRI environment, surface height, point/area lights, ambient lighting, and ambient occlusion – using a simple unified interface. Read More...

New Features Added in Beta Stage 1

Full HDR Support

Filter Forge 2.0 supports high dynamic range (HDR) colors across its entire rendering pipeline, from input images through components to rendered results. Over 60% of Filter Forge components now support HDR colors, and the new Color Picker lets you choose HDR colors with unlimited channel values. You are free to use colors as bright as you want – the Sun’s the limit! Read More...

Bomber Component

The new Bomber component lets you spray multiple image particles in a controlled manner. The component is incredibly versatile, very fast, and it lets you specify over 30 particle placement, coloration and randomization parameters, most of which can be mapped with images – which gives you tons of creative power! Read More...

Gamma-Aware Workflow

Filter Forge 2.0 takes the first step towards a gamma-aware workflow – it introduces a set of simple options to configure when and how Filter Forge applies gamma correction to images it loads or saves. One of the options lets you turn gamma correction off, so that Filter Forge can access RGB channel values of image pixels unaltered by gamma correction. Read More...

Median, Minimum, Maximum and Percentile Components

With these new components, you can now perform minimum, median, maximum and custom-percentile filtering. The Median and Percentile components are especially handy for creating a wide variety of artistic effects, thanks to their ability to simplify the source image by removing small details while preserving the edges. Read More...

Instant Filter Search

To make life easier for people with large filter collections, Filter Forge 2.0 introduces an instant filter search that lets you quickly find filters as you type, searching filter names, descriptions, authors and keywords, and displaying the results immediately. No more fuss with the categories – just type what you want and get it in less than a second! Read More...

Polygon and Ellipse Components

Filter Forge 2.0 now includes a Polygon component which lets you generate symmetrical N-gons and stars with adjustable round corners, and an Ellipse component that generates circles and ellipses. These seemingly simple components have a lot of mappable inputs, so their titular shapes can be easily morphed into a variety of other things, often quite unexpected. Read More...

Filter Forge 2.0 Beta Notes

• The testing is to be done in several stages, with new features added at every stage.
• All owners of Filter Forge 1.0 can get a free 2.0 beta key for the same edition valid till the end of the beta test. Please note that this key will not work with the commercial 2.0 version. To request the beta key, click here.
• Filters made with the 2.0 beta can't be submitted into the online filter library. This also means filters made in the 2.0 beta don't qualify for reward points.
• Registered users who are subscribed to our newsletter will receive the news related to the beta testing by email. You can register at http://www.filterforge.com/more/registration/. If you don't want to receive emails, you can subscribe to our news RSS feed.
• Please review the system requirements and supported host applications

Frequently Asked Questions about the Beta

Q:

If I buy Filter Forge 1.0 now, will I get 2.0 when it's released?

A:

No, if you order Filter Forge 1.0, you'll only get a free beta key for 2.0. To get a permanent license key after the commercial release, you'll have to buy an upgrade to 2.0. By the way, upgrading from 1.0 will cost less than purchasing the full 2.0 version.

Q:

If I don't upgrade to 2.0, will I still be able to download and submit library filters with my 1.0?

A:

Yes, the Filter Library will still support filters from version 1.0.

Q:

When should we expect to see the commercial release of version 2.0?

A:

Filter Forge 2.0 is planned for release in 2010.