When are you supposed to use a diffusion, waming, and cooling filter?

When are you supposed to use a diffusion, waming, and cooling filter? I know diffusion is usually used for photos of people to soften the skin, but what else?

Is it also true that shots with a lot of texture look good in black and white?

With digital there's really no need to use any of these - they can all be done in Photoshop.

Warming and cooling are particularly easy, especially if you shoot RAW. To warm, move your colour temperature to a lower number, to cool, move your colour temperature to a higher number. Another alternative is to use the cooling and warming options in the Photo Filter in Photoshop.

Soft-focus, or diffusion, is more difficult to characterise as one particular filter in Photoshop - it depends on the look you're trying to create. However, I'd rather have full control over the effect in Photoshop than apply a uniform effect (which can't be reversed) in camera.

David

I do only use PS (Photoshop Elements 4.0) filters too.

When you say "temp is too high" what does that mean visually?

Isn't the other way around. Slide to a higher number for warmer and slide lower for cooler. Example if you slide it down to 2000k your image will turn blue. You make out to70,000k and you have yellow image..

No - it really is the way round I said, counter-intuitive as it is. Warm light is a lower colour temperature (for example, incandescent is typically 2700K or thereabouts) than daylight (5000-6500K).

David

Thats why I love this site... Learn something new everyday.... Thanks for the insight