This week, we've got a very nice photo effects tool that's available for download from TwistingPixels, the TwistingPixels Sampler. TwistingPixels sells a library of Photoshop plug-ins and filters. As part of their effort to get the word out about their for-sale plug-ins, they offer a very nice sampler pack of free plug-ins you can download and use.

One aspect of their sampler pack we particularly liked was the TwistingPixels program. This is a very simple application that lets you run their plug-ins on images without requiring you to install a big photo editing application like Photoshop.

The sampler pack comes with nine filter plug-ins. We'll take you through examples of each. For the filters we're talking about in this article, we started with the boat image from our handy clip art library, shown in Figure A.

FIGURE A

This is the starting image. Click picture for a larger image.

Black and white
The company claims to have some unique technology for getting better black and white images than you'd otherwise get doing your own editing. We couldn't necessarily verify that the imaging was better, but the filters did produce some nice black and white conversions, as shown in Figure B.

FIGURE B

We converted this to black and white using the red channel. Click picture for a larger image.

What's nice is this plug-in allows you to use channels for your conversion, so you can produce some of the best black and whites we've seen from a free tool.

Contrasting levels
Contrasting levels, as explained by the company, Captures details lost in the shadows. It also reduces the brightness range of an excessively contrast image, by subduing bright areas of sky, water, snow, and sand, which bring the light back to a normal range. We liked it because it allowed us to really punch up an image without making the colors look distorted, as shown in Figure C.

FIGURE C

Contrasting levels lets you really have fun tinkering with your photos look. Click picture for a larger image.

Duotone
We've all seen duotone effects, the use of two colors to represent a photo's image data. The TwistingPixels Sampler also includes a duotone filter, but we really liked this one because you have a lot of extra control. You wouldn't think that Figure D was done with a free duotone filter, but it was.