A filter workshop
Each one is grounded in published research or an exact construction, then tuned by eye on real photographs. For GIMP, Photoshop and the desktop, and on the command line for enterprise pipelines.
Before After The filters
For GIMP and Photoshop now; the desktop next
01 · Bloom and glare
Glow that follows the eye, not a blur slider.
Multi-pass bloom, ported from a game engine’s post-processing chain to still images, plus the four kinds of glare the vision literature measures separately: veil, corona, halo and streaks. Bright light spills the way it does on a retina, and it eases into the headroom below white instead of clipping into a flat disc.
Before After 02 · Pattern screens
Halftones in any shape you like.
Redraws the image in tiled shapes: dots, lines, hexagons, stars, hearts, crosshatch and brick. Ink coverage follows the tone whatever the shape, so a star screen reads as cleanly as a dot screen, with crisp or soft edges.
Before After 03 · Dithering and old screens
Twenty-five dithers, and the cable and tube they came through.
Error diffusion, ordered, clustered-dot and blue-noise dithering, to levels or to a real palette: Game Boy, CGA, PICO-8, Riso inks. Then, if you like, the picture goes down a composite cable, onto a worn VHS tape, and through a CRT with scanlines, a shadow mask and phosphor glow.
Before After 04 · Distressed type
Type that wears like the real thing.
Set a phrase in a real font, properly shaped, then wear it down. Wear bites a set depth into every letter, so hairlines break before heavy stems do, the way old metal type and paint behave. Ink bleed spreads like ink, not like a blocky filter.
05 · Masks
Masks from gradients and keys, snapped to edges.
A mask is a stack of up to eight layers. Each is a directional gradient or a key on one of the image’s channels, and each goes through the same response curve, so combining them takes one blend mode. “Blue, but only near the top of the frame” is a sky mask. An edge-aware pass then pulls the transitions onto real edges in the photograph.
Before After 06 · Nixie tubes
Words lit in a row of tubes.
Each character gets its own tube, lit in neon behind curved glass, and the tubes stand in a row as on a counter, a clock or an instrument panel. Every tube has its own seed, so no two are bent, worn or blown alike. The whole picture is composited in linear light, and the glare from all the tubes is laid over it at once.
Before After Research, then tuned by eye
A veil of scattered light from the eye’s point spread function. Needles from particles in the lens. A rainbow ring. Streaks from the iris. The vision literature measures them separately, so the filter computes them separately, in linear light, sized in degrees of visual angle.
How the filters are made →Where they run
The same library backs every host, so a preset renders the same pixels in GIMP, Photoshop, the desktop app and a build script. The GIMP and Photoshop plug-ins are on sale now; the desktop app follows. The command-line tools come with Enterprise.
A native GIMP 3 plug-in written in C, with the filter linked in statically. GIMP 3.0 or later, Linux and Windows.
A UXP panel running the filter as WebAssembly. Photoshop 2024 (25.0) or later, macOS and Windows.
Distortionary for the desktop: open, adjust with a live preview, export. Linux and Windows; macOS later.
Enterprise only. The same filter as a command-line tool, for batches, build scripts and render farms. Settings load from JSON presets.
Pricing
Each plug-in is $29, for GIMP or Photoshop; all 5 are $69. Builds for GIMP 3 and 2.10 on Linux and Windows, or Photoshop on macOS and Windows. Every purchase includes a year of updates, free: each new version lands under the same license key.
Complete set $69, sold through Gumroad
A small workshop, on purpose
Distortionary is David Berube's filter workshop. Each filter starts from published research or exact geometry and is then tuned by eye on real photographs until it looks right. The catalog is small on purpose. A filter ships when it runs the same in every host and holds up on a full-size image.
Read the method →Still on the bench
Blends two fonts into a letter neither has: sets a phrase in both, matches their spacing, and blends the shapes. A stroke halfway between a hairline and a heavy stem comes out halfway thick, not gray.
The same blend, kept as vector outlines, so the result scales to any size and saves as SVG.
Each gets its own page when it’s finished. Not before.
