Special effects software

The tables below compare special effects software (mostly photo editors and image editors) by listing the effects and special effects a software can apply to your photos.

Usage of the tables:
In the effects tables below, some lines contain a question-mark like this one:

By clicking on the question-mark, a window with an example of the corresponding special effect will open. More examples will be added.

Legend:

Y means that a software implements the corresponding feature.

Y- means that a software implements the corresponding feature with some restrictions, reduced capability or less conveniently than average photo software do.

Y+ means that a software implements the corresponding feature particularly well and/or in a very user friendly way.

an empty field means that a software
- does not offer the corresponding special effect,
- the availability of the special effect has not been tested or
- the special effect has not (yet) been found.

List of the photo editors -and their versions- retained for the comparison tables below.

Software name + link	Version tested
Zoner Photo Studio	7.00
PhotoPhilia	1.8
Photo-Brush	2.25
Paint Shop Pro	5.00
Photoshop Elements	2.02
Ultimate paint	2.83

Most photo editors listed offer a large palette of unique special effects that are not listed in the table below. Often, it is not very easy to recognize that 2 softwares are able to apply the same effect, because they may call it completely differently, even that the result is the same.

Special effects software : improvement effects

IMPROVEMENT EFFECTS
Software these buttons are links -->
barrel	Y		Y		Y
blur	Y	Y	Y	Y		Y
blur (gaussian)			Y	Y
equalize	Y			Y
greyscale	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
median filter	Y	Y	Y	Y		Y
negative image	Y	Y	Y	Y		Y
noise (add)		Y		Y		Y
noise (remove)	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
pincushion	Y		Y		Y
sharpen (high pass filter)	Y	Y	Y	Y
sharpen (unsharp mask)	Y		Y	Y	Y
split channels (RGB)			Y	Y

Special effects software : artistic effects

ARTISTIC EFFECTS
Software these buttons are links -->
button maker	Y			Y
colorize			Y	Y
drop shadow	Y	Y		Y
edge detection	Y			Y	Y
emboss	Y+	Y+	Y	Y	Y	Y
emboss color			Y			Y
envelope (add an)	Y
explosion	Y				Y	Y
fade borders	Y
frame (add a)		Y			Y
mosaic or pixelize	Y	Y	Y	Y		Y
motion blur				Y	Y
oil paint	Y	Y			Y
old photograph effect	Y		Y
pencil drawing	Y
posterize		Y	Y	Y	Y
solarize		Y	Y	Y	Y
spacial filters,Laplacian,Sobel...		Y
swirl (twirl)					Y
user filter		Y				Y
water waves	Y		Y		Y

Links to our examples of special effects:

It is more convenient to have a look at the examples by mean of a click on the question mark in the lines of the special effects software tables above. Nevertheless, if for any reason the question marks do not work for you, text links to the examples of special effects are given below.

  - example of the effect 3D button maker
  - example of the effect emboss
  - example of the effect greyscale image
  - example of the effect negative image
  - example of the effect split channels

Note 1:
The information in the table of special effects and special effects software above is given without any warranty.
The Paint Shop Pro Version tested is version 5.
The currently available version is version 9 and features may be different.

Note 2:
Photoshop Elements and Ultimate Paint -two image editors and special effects softwares- offer a very large palette of unique special effects that are not listed in the tables above because of being unique to each one.

Note 3:
Very similar effects are often named differently by different special effects softwares and thus could have been declared missing even they are implemented.