Another filter

I discovered a different effects filter in my Corel Paint Shop Pro software. At the bottom of the list I spotted "user defined" and gave it a look. To my relief, this filter also has a random button which gave me this result. There are dozens of boxes one can fill in with various values if one only knew what one was doing.

Here's the original photo, taken through the windshield as I drove down the Columbia Gorge. I wanted to capture the almost silver effect of the sun glancing off the river. Only later did I remember I had my polarizing sunglasses on so the photo didn't look very much like what I was seeing.


I ran across this observation in an article about plein air painting regarding collecting reference material versus creating a finished work:

"The sketch is a true statement of things as you found them; the picture is an arrangement of these things as you wish them to be." Landscape painter John F. Carlson.

This thought made me feel a little bit better about my use of random filter settings. I take lots of pictures, most I realize more for reference than for actual reproducing. If I run them through random filters, it is still my creative sense that is deciding that a certain result or "arrangement" is a good one, manipulated as I wish even if I didn't slide the sliders or enter the values myself. That manipulated photo above is giving me ideas...