The Filter That Was Doomed

From Filter Forge Wiki

This is a brief compilation of the various "bad traits" that characterize 'Low' usage filters in general, and some thoughts on them.

• Poor Interactive Rendering Performance: One of the prime usage killers in my book. If a filter is too slow for me to be able to tweak it interactively, I'll seldom bother, regardless of the visual quality of the filter. I had to learn this the hard way with 'Synthetic Cubism'. While I love the filter, it is a royal PITA to tweak even on fast machines.
  

• Over-specialization: The filter is so specialized that its potential use is limited from the start. Take my 'Liquorice Snail' as an example: It looks nice but still it has low usage (and that since ages, because it also renders slowly).
  

• Slap-Dash-Authoring: The filter hasn't received any 'love' whatsoever from its author. This is mostly evident in bad filter naming, non-existent/trivial descriptions, poor (or less than 9) factory presets and bad control naming.
  

• The Big Yawn Effect: This is similar to the "Slap-Dash-Authoring" in that the filter simply fails to make any impression at all. Filter library users have been so overexposed to large numbers of bland noises, generic patterns and kaleidoscopes, so don't bother to sink another one in the flood. Be creative!
  

• Lifesaver-centric Authoring: The filter looks excellent on the default lifesaver image, but it hasn't been constructed for other images or even tested on them. Big mistake, as the filter will quickly be dumped when this is discovered!
  

• Triviality: The filter does something that is utterly trivial. If that something can be achieved by standard photoshop means in a fraction of the loading-time of FF, why bother with the filter?

• Rip-Off: The filter is a clear rip-off of some successful filter. It is likely that users familiar with the filter library will detect such rip-offs instantly and just use the original filter.
  

• Broken Seamlessness: Many filters break when the 'Size, pixels' slider is used. In many cases this indicates bad filter construction and constitutes a major detriment towards earning an Editor's Pick.
  

• Bad Lead Preset: Since the lead preset is the first thing most users see when stumbling upon a filter, it should be as spectacular and representative of the filter as possible. Anything else just sells the filter below its actual value.
  

• Jack-Of-All-Trades: These are filters that attempt to do everything and consequently fail to do anything really well. My personal advice would be to keep filters focused on specific tasks (naturally there are exceptions to the rule). Keep in mind that filters are usually expected to provide solutions to very specific visual 'problems', whereas a jack-off-all-trades filter best lends itself to experimental purposes.
  

• Undiscoverable: With 4000+ filters on the library, keyword searches become very important. Many filters cannot be reliably found via these searches simply because they sport bad/undescriptive titles, descriptions and insufficient keywords that fail to provide the search engine with something to work with. Undiscoverable filters are a symptom of applied "Slap-Dash-Authoring".
  

-- Crapadilla