P: Non-destructive filter layers instead of smart-filters

Thank you for merging this Chris.

I think this would be very powerful and helpful even if there's a "slow" responses, and even if there needs to be a "render" button or sorts.

Just like when you try to resize a smart object with smart filters and it warns you that the smart filters won't display until the transformation is done, the same could apply when you move a layer under the adjustment layer.

As Mr.Cox has explained (might have been in another thread) Adjustment Layers can work fast because the calculate their effect for each pixel based on that pixel’s values alone, Filters on the other hand can derive the resulting values for a pixel from a huge number of (other) pixels, so the task is much more complex and does not lend itself to a Filter Layer implementation easily.

In the same way you can create filters to change level, brightness, color, etc, it would be great to be able to create filters that apply effects such as blur, sharpen, etc. With masking it would be a great way to losslessly retouch photos and apply depth/soft focus to illustrations.

Yeah, like apply a filter the EXACT same way that you can apply a filter In After Effects. Adobe does make that app too, assuming that all Adobe apps share a common core and UI, I would think this should be "easy" but I'm willing to bet that they are a mess of legacy code.

I never tried to suggest that GPUs are a panacea. My post was truthful in what it actually does say.

No, use of the GPU has nothing to do with this.
And "filter layers" as a concept only work for trivial filters on small images before the computation costs explode. That math doesn't change with the GPU, it just makes the explosion a small percentage less painful.

And because we allow third party filters, not all filters will be using the GPU. Also, many of the existing Photoshop filters would run slower on current and forseeable GPUs because of the operations being used.

Sorry, but GPUs are not a panacea. They have their own problems, and they don't solve the basic math involved here.

"Smart Filters take a while to calculate, because that's how long the filter takes to run on the size document you are using - they don't add anything to the time it would take to run them manually. It would actually be slower if you tried to use those same filters as "filter layers", and if you tried to work under the filter layer, it would be painfully slow (or just offer a bad UI by disabling and re-enabling the filters all the time). "

Smart filters could run hundreds to thousands of times faster if Photoshop updated its ancient filters to alternatives being evaluated by the GPU. There are other applications which do utilise the GPU to provide multiple stacked filters with which you interact with no perceptible lag, whereas Photoshop has to disable upper filters while you adjust one within the stack and then takes up to several seconds to refresh the image.

Even working with a single filter (except the recent introductions which are GPU-based) in standard non-Smart mode, Photoshop is a cross between a dinosaur and a sloth. There are alternative apps costing under $50 which make Photoshop look pitiful (in both performance and provided controls) when it comes to filters other than those which Ps does implement via the GPU - Liquify and Shift-Tilt Blur, for example, which are excellent.

Nor do we mention all the other 300 known market segments....

adobe doesn`t even mention retouchers on their website as their target/user group :-)))

as i said, i`m not a programmer. i just don`t think smart-filters are the perfect solution 😉 if you read my messages, try to imagine me being a nice guy 🙂 without accentuation its often hard to understand written text the right way.