merging effects?

Hello,
Your "Red Lady" is absolutely breath-taking. I am brand new at this and just downloaded Filter Forge and found your picture when hunting for more filters. If I may ask, how did or do you merge the different filters you used for this piece. Did you do it through Filter Forge or Photoshop, which I also have. Is there a tutorial that I can log onto to learn how to merge the different filters? Your help would be greatly appreciated. Pam

Welcome to the forum and to Filter Forge (FF)!

I suposse that you are refering to the Lady Red by RainDog that have used 6 different filters to make that awesome work and very artistic.

You are asking how to merge filters and you said that you have already Photoshop, so to merge filter effects can be done in a couple of ways I know for beginners.

One way is as Skybase have already told you, and is to use Filter forge in standalone mode without Photoshop

1 - load the original image into Filter Forge (FF)
2 - adjust the settings for your desired effect
3 - save the result (render it)
4 - Load the saved result and repeat steps 2 and 3 above.

Regretably on this one you do not have a control over how much of the filter is going to be applied over the image and it is all or nothing, I mean you can´t control how much of the filter is going to be applied over the image, unless you modify the filter you are going to use and add some kind of blending control with the source image (although this way will make invalid the usage rank that the author deserves)and also you could use alternative blend modes to mix the effect.

Also you can do the same as above perhaps easier when you use Photoshop

1 - load the original image into Photoshop and then activate FF plug-in
2 - adjust the settings for your desired effect
3 - save the result (render it) and will be taken directly to Photoshop screen and so you do not have to load it back again
4 - Now as you already have the image with the filter already applied and loaded you can repeat steps 2 and 3 as many times as you want or need

Also another alternative and different possible way if you want to have other effects and more control with blend modes and do not want to use the blend modes inside FF would be to do the following:

1 - load Photoshop, load the original image into Photoshop, duplicate the image into another layer, select the first layer again, and then activate FF plug-in
2 - adjust the settings for your desired effect
3 - save the result (render it) and will be shown in Photoshop
4 - Select the second layer with the original image to have a clean image again, and then activate again the FF plug-in and repeat steps 2 and 3 above
5 - Now you have two layers each one with a different effect applied and you can mix them with Photoshop blend modes.

If you have the idea of applying more than 2 filters, you have to keep always a copy of the original image in another layer so you can keep adding FF filters and be able to use different blend modes.

With this you can have more layers and more effects.

Although you do not have to apply always the FF filters to the original image, you can also used a mix of both ways, and apply some filters to the orinal image, and apply some other filters to the results image and mix both of them with Photoshop blend modes.

Sorry that I will not be abale to answer soon, as I am very busy now and do not know when I will be able to connect again, and now I have to go. Hope this helps you.