Filter Factory - Technical Analysis and Inofficial Patch

by Daniel Marschall

Filter Factory is a plugin for Photoshop which was developed by Adobe in 1994/95 is one of my favorite plugins.

Since 2012, I am analysing and extending this plugin, and also have found several undocumented functions.
My patch contains a lot of bugfixes and a few other improvements, and it also extends the maximum code size of user scripts.

Please note that this page is mostly about the Photoshop plugin for Windows. Filter Factory also exists for Adobe Premiere and for Macintosh. I have not further analyzed or patched these.

Download

Download inofficial patch version 3.1.1 for Photoshop/Win32 (based on version 3.0.4)

Download all known releases, like Filter/Transition Factory for Premiere and Macintosh

How to install

To install the plugin to Photoshop, copy the 8BF-file into the directory C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Photoshop ....\Plug-Ins\Filters and then restart Photoshop.

To install the plugin to other hosts (e.g. Paint.net), please follow the instructions of the specific application. A few hints:

Troubleshooting

If you run a modern version of Windows:

If you run 64 bit:

If you run Windows 3.11:

If you run a non-Photoshop product (which is compatible with Photoshop plugins):

General issues:

It appears that Filter Factory does not work on some systems with Adobe Photoshop CS6. If you know more, please contact me.

Documentation

Known bugs, limitations and incompatibilities

List of all functions (incl. undocumented ones!)

Technical analysis

Filter Foundry

Filter Foundry is an OpenSource remake of Filter Factory. It is be fully compatible with FilterFactory and is available for 32 bit and 64 bit Windows systems. I have contributed a lot of new features and bugfixes to this project.

Software and tools

If you enjoy creating Filters, you might also want to check out FilterMeister and FilterFormula.

Ancient software and tools:

Links to other good pages

Filter Factory Programming Guide by Werner D. Streidt

Note: There are some mistakes in the programming guide:

  1. tan(x) is NOT bounded and WILL go to +/- infinity! See the correct diagram here
  2. The ranges of the i,u,v functions are wrong. The correct ranges are: i=0..254, u=-55..55, v=-77..77, however, these ranges have been changed in my patch to i=0..255, u=-55..55, v=-78..78.
  3. The diagram of the polar coordinate functions and the range of variable d is wrong. The correct values are -512 to 512, going clockwise, beginning from the 9 o'clock position. The original Filter Factory manual is wrong, too.
  4. The download-links are outdated

Contact

You can contact me at daniel-marschall(at)viathinksoft.de