[Viking]

Filter Forge 3 is the newest version of Filter Forge, a node-based filter and texture creation program. It works as both a stand-alone and a photoshop plugin.
It comes with a standard set of filters and there is a library of over 8000 user contributed filters and textures available to add to your installation. As this is very new I was interested to see if it would work with Twisted Brush as a plugin.

The plugin component simply opens Filter Forge and imports the current layer and then re-exports it and closes Filter Forge when you finish applying changes.

I do not have Photoshop installed on my computer so when I installed Filter Forge the installer showed only the stand-alone program as being installed. However I found the plugin file located in a folder labeled "plugin" in the main Filter Forge folder. When I added that directory to the list of Adobe plugin directories in Twisted Brush it recognized it with no problem.

Filter Forge worked well for me. You simply select it from the plugin list, check the alpha fix and preview boxes and it starts right up.

A nice feature of Filter Forge is that you can download and add filters while you have an image open so it is easy to try several filters to find the effect that you need. All submitted filters are required to have 9 presets as well as the adjustment sliders you can get any effect you can think of for your image.

New users may find it a bit confusing because you have apply the changes in Filter Forge, which will close the program and show them as a preview and then apply the changes in Twisted Brush.

There are three versions of Filter Forge available with an increasing range of features and price so if you only want to access the filter library you can get the least expensive version. Filter Forge is often available at a discount (the 60% holiday discount may still apply).

If you do a lot of work with filters or textures this could be the only plugin you need. It is worth a try (and there is a free trial version available.)