Merge two filters

I would really really like the ability to get a source from a surface rendered image: that way you could do filters on filters. An example would be I could be able to get my rendered mud from my Mire filter and then apply another filter (My Plast Wrap filter *submitted 21st of May*)to the source and get a new effect that is impossible to get other wise. A.K.A. This picture
[img]http://lh5.google.com/image/PorterNielsen/RlHLk3eoCpI/AAAAAAAAAJM/kWJJ8XG5HsI/s800/shiny.jpg" /[/img]

Think of all the new filters that could be created!

Unfortunately, Filter Forge does not allow you to connect the output of Root component (the only way to get "surface"-type filters) to any other components. This is a technical limitation of current rendering engine and is not easily to overcome (there are subtle, but challenging supersampling-related difficulties in the possible implementation, along with some conceptual UI issues). This _may_ be resolved in a future major version, with addition of separate shading components, but I would not hold breath for it.

So the only currently available option is to save the output of one filter (preferably to a lossless format if you have the Professional version, like 32-bit OpenEXR with PIZ compression), then load it as an input image and apply the second filter. Also, keep in mind that Filter Forge supports "actions" in Adobe Photoshop-compatible hosts (Photoshop itself along with ImageReady work fine, other hosts may be quirky since their not-so-compatible implementation of the plugin API spec), so you can apply two filters in one action, and then just reuse it (you may suffer from precision issues though if you use 8/16-bit images).

Hope my explanation wasn't too long