The DOs and DON'Ts of Filter Construction

From Filter Forge Wiki

Introduction

Welcome to The DOs and DON'Ts Of Filter Construction article!

I'm glad you've found your way here, because that means you care about learning your way around FF, about creating efficient filters and becoming a better filter author. Three cheers to that, but let's cut right to the cheese! Your FF trial period won't last forever, you know! ;P

The Purpose of this Article

So what's this article all about? Well...

An important aspect of filter construction often overlooked is efficiency: the delicate balance between the best possible visual result and the minimum filter complexity necessary to achieve it. The rendering and interactive performance of a filter is as important as its end result, and consequently a filter author should strive to achieve it as economically as possible. While it is true that all roads lead to Rome (meaning: the Result component), the wise filter author prepares these roads in a way that makes for the smoothest journey.

This is where this article comes into play. It is meant as a collection of thoughts and techniques on filter construction, the DOs and DON'Ts so to speak, that should serve to alert filter authors to the various pitfalls that litter the filter tree. The article assumes that you are already familiar with the basics of Filter Forge, and that you have already perused the official Filter Forge Help section.

Alright, without further ado, off we go! Towards more efficient filters!!! ;)

Chapters

This article has grown quite considerably since its inception and had to be split into separate wiki pages for viewing convenience. The following 'chapters' are currently available:

• Fundamental Techniques
  
• Blur Lore
  
• Avoiding Bitmap-Based Components
  
• Noise Lore
  
• Seamless Tiling
  
• Surface Filters
  
• Photorealism Techniques
  
• Best Practices
  
• Clipping
  
• Miscellaneous
  

Contributions

Anyone willing to contribute to this article is very welcome to do so. Commenting can be done in the forum thread for better visibility. For the sake of visual consistency, let's adhere to the following guidelines:

Stay true to the mark-up style and formatting set forth already in this wiki article. Place your article in the proper section (see the table of contents). Highlight your entry visually by using the colored background markup (as demonstrated throughout this article). Use break tags throughout your entry, and end your markup code with a break tag. Provide at least one meaningful filter editor image to illustrate your entry. The direction of component connections should be the FF default "Left > Right", and a medium or large thumbnail size is preferred for visual clarity. Keep any images at a constant width of 900 pixels. Nice formats are 900x300, 900x450, 900x600 and 900x900 px. Text should be instructive. Keep your text brief, to the point, and organized. All references to FF components should be italicized and link to the appropriate help entry. References to component parameters should be italicized. Put your signature at the end of your entry, like so: -- Crapadilla

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Sjeiti & Sphinx. for their excellent contributions to this article!

My gratitude to Carl, Beliria and many others for "additional" inspiration. ;P

-- Crapadilla