nik makes a program called color efex. i've enjoyed it mostly because of the polarizing filter it has. my intel macintosh has cs3. i can't get color efex 2.0 (which is what i have) to work. it works fine with my old computer where i use cs2. any suggestions for either how to make it work or about another polarizing filter plugin.

yes, you need CFX 3 to run on Photoshop CS3 I'm afraid.

thanks, phil. i was afraid of that. do you know of any other polarizing plugin?

No – not really as most of the good ones (like Tiffen) are all quite pricey. You can however do a quick and reasonable job of faking it in Photoshop by creating a Neutral density blend instead by doing the following:

1. Create a new transparent layer over the image you want to add the ND Grad effect to.

2. Mix a foreground colour in your palette of a neutral smokey grey – say a value of 88 in all 3 RGB channels.

3. Using the Gradient tool, draw a transparent gradient on the new layer staring with the solid smokey grey at the top blending to nothing at the depth where you want the effect to stop.

4. Set the layer with the gradient on to an Overlay blending mode instead of Normal.

5. Adjust transparency of the gradient layer to suit your needs.

6. Voila :-)