Filter Forge user base and product promotion

I am constantly amazed by the creative genius of the people developing filters with Filter Forge. I hope they will continue to create great filters and that a next version of Filter Forge will be forthcoming. However, one thing has me a little worried. Filter Forge is a crazy fantastic product for the technically and artistically inclined, but is Filter Forge growing its user base and winning new talented filter developers to the extent that would be possible?

I think a lot more could be done to promote this fabulous product. It IS fabulous, but how can this be discovered? Assuming I heard about Filter Forge from someone and visited the home page to learn about how it works. The tutorial page has some great information but it is not structured. Videos highlighting how easy it is to create a filter with the product are stuck between tutorials on how to apply a ready-made filter to an image. And I couldn't even find a link to the tutorial page from the Filter Forge home page. Instead, I found it hidden at the lower right hand corner of the filter page.

For those interested mainly in filter development, on the Features page, there is some technical information about the filter components, but no videos showing how easy it is to use the product. The Filter Forge community Wiki contains lots of useful information for filter developers, but how does one find it? I think I followed a post from one of the forums once to get there, but I couldn't find a link to it from the Filter Forge site when I looked.

Aside from these things, I think the Filter Forge team is missing other opportunities to grow the product. Strategic partnerships with other companies, a Youtube channel with company sponsored training videos, better recognition for the top filter developers (how many free copies of Filter Forge does a filter developer really need?), company sponsored filter development challenges, etc etc would certainly help to increase the user base and motivate the current users. Right now, the company is leaving too much to the community (tutorials, wiki, etc.), so although good content is there, it is haphazard and hard to find. I have not noticed any changes since I first became aware of Filter Forge 2.0 (Kelbyone.com apparently thinks that is still the current version - they are offering a 55% discount on Filter Forge 2.0 to their members). I understand that a small team on a low budget can't move mountains, but investing in product promotion activities can pay off in the long run.

I would be interested to hear what others think.

SpaceRay's kinda driving the beginner side of things. Basically put: tutorials!

By the way with #1, you're basically looking at the documentation. Typically documentations don't give you full-on instructions on how to do things. They only give you descriptions of parameters and otherwise if necessary. You probably are asking for quick-start-guides.

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In Filter Forge there is very little learning source easily to be able to learn to start making filters and learn to use filter editor and how to use and combine the different components

So I think this can actually be a video discussion that might be interesting to talk about. The thing with understanding groupings is that sometimes, you just can't approach building a filter in that manner. You can... but when you want something more specific... you kinda can't. Sometimes, major edits to a filter require restructuring of the base level item. As much as snippets are a great starting point, given they already give you combos of necessary things, you often only get what the author has set up. This often happens with programming when you want something specific but you just can't get it given the limitations you're already facing. You really just have to start from scratch sometimes.

But either way, I think a short video might be worthy of talking about this sort of thing. It's kinda key to understanding what we think of when we build something.

In regard to promos... I'd showcase professional examples of FilterForge being used. A lot of "user-based" submission is wonderful, and makes it feel homey. But when it comes down to "Promotion" you gotta get serious. We drool at professionals using software for a very good reason: that they achieved a level of standard the user-base hasn't. That they "lead" the industry with tools. Seeing pros do their thing with the software... makes us dream big and bigger.

And hey, I wanna see more "experts" on this forum do more discussion, that's a promo on its own.

I also don't think FilterForge should look like a "grab-bag of filters" too!

Thank you for all your comments. Aside from any technical issues (like slow rendering time for some filter components), the main problem with Filter Forge is a faulty business model.

Any successful business must know what the target audience is and consciously seek out, market to and cater to that audience. Relying solely on the community to perform this function cannot work.

In the case of Filter Forge my impression is that a small group of people developed a great piece of software (great job), made it possible for users to share their creations (also great job) and just left it at that. I don't know what they did at the very beginning to build up the user base they have now (also good job), because I wasn't following the product back then, but it looks like they never took their concept to the next level.

The only time I receive an email from Filter Forge is when a new version or beta comes out. (These emails are not visually appealing, unfortunately.) The company is missing a marketing opportunity to engage their audience. Sadly, the company doesn't really have anything new to tell me, but this could change.

Tepearly rightly mentions that there is a lack of sharing (or sharing opportunities). Although the Filter Forge Facebook page has over 38,000 "likes", I don't see any encouragement for people to share their works there. To promote his book, author Steve Caplin does that very well in the forums on his How to Cheat at Photoshop website. In the Friday Challenge forum he challenges the community to manipulate a photo and then picks the one he likes best. What if Filter Forge showcased a different filter every week and asked users to post their most beautiful creation done with that filter? If done on Facebook, the community could even take over the job of picking the best examples by liking the entries. When this catches on, another sharing venue could be considered.

I agree that professional works of art created using the filters should be showcased whenever possible. This is challenging, since professional artists don't always want to reveal the "secret sauce" that went into their creations, but it might be possible to do more than is currently done.

With regard to marketing to filter developers, I think even one strategically marketed official introductory video (something short and simple like the "how to create a simple comic filter" video by Skybase), once viewed, would do the trick. Any 15 year old who is in the least interested in image manipulation would take it from there after viewing the video. A weekly or monthly filter developer challenge would further encourage them to participate. Teens are especially eager to share their know-how and would enliven the discussion amongst filter developers. The teen market is vital and should be given special attention.

New markets and audiences could be better targeted. Other companies are charging big bucks for collections of jpgs to be used as backdrops, patterns or textures for photographers or scrapbookers. If I search for those things I don't find any information related to Filter Forge.

I have too many ideas on this subject and not enough time to organize them and put them in writing in a coherent fashion.

I like the idea of texture challenges, practical things or even strange things like Swiss Cheese Elephant skin. Or burnt rainbow Marshmallow.

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EAdams wrote: I don't know what they did at the very beginning to build up the user base they have now (also good job), because I wasn't following the product back then, but it looks like they never took their concept to the next level.

I tend to agree. They've always been focused almost exclusively on software development, with little actual community management/promotion going on. This is why we have a fantastic product, and also why we're seeing a steady decline in community activity/interest year after year since the time of the first and second open beta.

These days there's just not that much new/exciting stuff going on, which was very different during the "Golden Age of Discovery" that was the first beta. Since those days, many experienced forgers have exhausted FF's built-in participatory incentives. They've been forced out of the addictively fun cycle of Discovery > Filter Authoring > Submission > Reward due to the lack of a properly rewarding Endgame, if I may borrow an MMO gaming term. Some have since moved on, focusing their creative attention elsewhere. This has had some noticeably adverse effect on the quality of the filter library, which arguably is one of FF's most important selling points. And this is also where - in my humble opinion - FF Inc. should bring their game to the next level.

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Let's be honest... it's pretty boring here haha. [...] what FilterForge seriously can set the minds on is fostering what it used to be.

Indeed, and it's a real pity, because it used to be quite exciting in the "good old days". I'd log on and somebody was guaranteed to have discovered something cool about FF. Even the devs were surprised that some of the stuff that got posted during the betas was even possible. Good times!

Back to the topic...

While discussing the user-base, we should remember that - at its roots - the FF community was always about a relatively small bunch of beta-testers, discovering what was possible with the program. We never really had a lot of pure "filter users" coming here showcasing their work, so the forums never blossomed into a creative artist's hub (which they might as well have). Rather, it was always about building filters and learning to build filters - the technical side of things. So that's really the core of the audience here: Filter authors.

This is just my personal impression, but it always seemed to me that the devs perceived the forums as "just" an extension of the beta-testing - another aspect of their software development process, if you will. Everything beyond this process was of lower priority. The quality of the community that grew around the open beta process was - more or less - a happy accident.

This seems rather strange, considering that a high-quality filter library should logically be considered one of FF's strong selling points, and consequently, fostering a community of filter-builders should be an important aspect of building success for the application.

The way things currently stand with submission incentives, experienced filter authors will inevitably move on, their expertise lost to the community. New authors will come, of course, but they will find less and less of a community to support them. It's a process of self-depletion, inherent to the system, with no active counters (i.e. community fostering) installed against it.

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In the end, I really wanna see some growth in the community again. I think it's unfortunate / very disappointing things are in a state like this.

+1

*** sounds of crickets chirping lazily in the afternoon sun, observing a lone, unhurried tumbleweed strolling by ***

That's my impression of the forums these days. ... ... ... !!!

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Okay, so how do we do that?

Good question. IMHO, FF Inc. needs to seriously re-examine their stance on community management and start actively fostering the community.

Example:

Lua scripting capability - introduced with FF2 - has been around for almost 4 years now. Do a filter library search for "lua", "script", "scripting", etc, and you'll be getting 20-40 serious results. Look at the scripting sub-forum: 80 topics. Underused. It's rather sad really, because through scripting FF could seriously grow their toolset - and make FF better for all users without having to divert developer resources - IF ONLY they were properly incentivising the community.

So I'm asking, where are the official scripting challenges/competitions for Delaunay Triangulation, a generalized Pipes or Maze component, functional Erosion, etc? Life-time upgrades for whoever creates the best solution? Well, why not.

The ideas are all there! It's just that nobody willing to do the work (or share it, for that matter), because there is no incentive.

As I suggested above, the core of the forum community is largely comprised of people interested in techniques for filter creation. They come here looking for solutions to specific filter construction problems. How do you make a Bomber's particles all spawn in one spot? How do you do a perspective transform? That's the audience you have to nurture, IMHO.

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Skybase wrote: The thing here with me is that I'm just going to continue lurking around FF until I see some forum post that interests me. I just leave comments around lately and no longer filters. I really don't feel like making more tutorials, posting "how tos", teaching people specifics, upload any additional content, nor post filters to the library... simply because I no longer see the community.

Exactly my feelings.

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Tepearly wrote: Honestly, we can talk all we like about what the developers need to do to build up the forums but none of that will happen unless we start it ourselves to prove there is interest.

Well, these forums have seen numerous attempts at "starting it ourselves", but they all lost their momentum very quickly. Challenges. Competitions. Edit trains. It's been tried. And it mostly failed.

In my experience, interest in FF always peaks when a new open beta starts -- when there is the promise of new creative possibilities. Once the commercial release hits, it's back to silence, both on the forums and on the developer side.

So how can FF Inc. spark interest in these phases of drought?

<dream>

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One way could be - as I suggested above - to hold scripting competitions. Pose a problem to the community and reward the best solution. Look at gaps in the toolset and let the community fill them. This way FF Inc. would generate new creative possibilities for FF users on a regular basis, with a predictable schedule. You'd keep and bind the generated interest by making official competitions a regular (perhaps monthly?) event. New Month ---> New Toy! ---> Filter Forger happy!

</dream>

Challenges are good but there should be other types aside fr om scripting (I'm assuming you mean the specialized coding components) as well because there are many levels of users some of whom could have ideas for filters but scripting only challenges would be restrictive in a way.

When I read through the forums, a lot of what I see is "something's wrong with this" or "fix this" and a whole lot of "where's my software key". Some of the stuff is geared towards advanced users and people who have been programing for years and for me being new to filter building I'm not even sure wh ere I fit in. Also, it sounds like a lot of you are game and high end graphics developers so any new people aren't going to know if the forums are the right place for their experiments. I tried that before but it didn't go anywhere so I haven't bothered with it anymore. Haha all my discoveries are yesterdays news to you haha I'm not complaining, I'm just showing you what it feels like on my end.

Anyway, Filter Forge developers, you're community has spoken! Haha Time for challenges of many kinds and some fun along the way!

I mean, I would upload more snippets and samples with documentation if I get more reactions lol.
Those are honestly the biggest motivators.

Videos are good for those who speak good English, but as English is not my langage, I think that videos are to speedy for me and also for the others who do not understand or speak this langage very well.

I prefer manuals with examples. So I can understand much better and at my rythm. Imagine me looking a video not once or twice, but 10 times or more to understand something. With manuals, I can practice at the same time I learn the manual, so I can understand after once or twice, not 10 times.

So videos +++ manuals is ok, but just videos... no good for a lot of users.

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Then use the batch renderer

Did I miss the addition of this feature, or do you mean 'Command-Line Renderer'?