Making the impossible possible using Photoshop filters for stunning artistic photo effects is simple and easy—though it requires a fair bit of imagination, about an hour of free time, and a spark of inspiration. Graphic design in website layouts (or web design, to put it simply) is used in various forms, but true artistic styling is rare. And part of the reason is that finding or creating a themed image can be quite difficult if you don’t have the skill. But what if you use photographs?
You can absolutely create something beautiful using Photoshop filters. Need fog or rain on the horizon? There’s a filter for that. Want to reorient a composition? There’s a filter for that too. There are even filters to enhance the sky and make it look more alive and vibrant—not fairytale-like, but rich. Realistic and surreal graphics at the same time, trompe-l’œil 3D effects, or an animal in the ocean that suddenly looks like it’s moving—it's all achievable through filters. Standard filters.
The beauty of filters is that they let you start from scratch and create effects specifically for the composition you’re working on. Artistic photography can become a great source of inspiration for web designers , a creative boost—or a nightmare when you spend an hour tweaking a single image. But using just the Liquify filter, working with texture becomes much faster. There are many filters in Photoshop, and each of them can enhance and transform different elements of a composition—clouds, flares, glows, light leaks—and they can be blended together.
This is both a complex and simple art, beautiful and captivating. So let’s look at it more closely and go over some basics.
Artistic Graphics in Web Design
We’ve often mentioned that nearly any photo used as a website background or design element is edited by designers. It’s made brighter or lighter, more contrasted, or detailed. We even discussed how you can achieve much of that using just layer blending modes .
But in web design, there are also artistic, surreal images—for example: dolfinarium, gucci, rickerlyman, generativeartstudio, lik. You’ll find many similar works on Pinterest, Google Images, or Behance. Take, for instance, an elephant in the ocean—nothing special, yet the entire image is created using filters. Same goes for crocodiles, whales, etc. The beauty of such images lies in their blend of fantasy and realism—the more realistic they are, the more mysterious they feel. You can view all these images in full size here.
Websites with such visuals are rare, but they’re stunning. And that’s where we’ll look at how Photoshop filters work. Later, when selecting a background image for a homepage, you’ll be able to quickly decide whether it needs enhancement or tweaks—and know exactly how to do it.
Motion Blur
What makes the elephant image different from the one with the whale? Without diving deep into refraction, light behavior, or reflections, let’s just say that submerged objects appear slightly larger, blurrier, and shifted from the top if partially underwater. Think back to the straw-in-a-glass experiment from childhood. Same thing here. The whale image is already beautiful—no doubt about that—but what if we add a filter?
We work with smart filters to retain editing flexibility. Select the whale’s fins, then go to Filter → Blur → Motion Blur. Set a slight angle and a small distance. The whale now appears a bit “smeared”—which is fine, since underwater objects aren’t meant to be crystal clear. They need some noise or haze. That’s what we’re painting in.
Similarly, you can turn a static photo of a car into a moving one by blurring the wheels and background. In this case, it’s better to use Spin Blur from the Blur Gallery. The effects are similar—it just depends on what’s more convenient to work with.
Liquify
We already mentioned this filter in our calligraphy article, but let’s now focus on how great it is for creating wet textures, liquid surfaces, or moisture. A lone rock in the sea is rarely 100% dry. In a large whale image, you can skip this filter. But in smaller ones, a bit of “wetness” won’t hurt—especially along the waterline.
Go to Filter → Liquify, use the Forward Warp tool to gently paint along the edge of the rock. Adjust Pressure and Density for your image. The higher the values, the more visible the effect. To reduce deformation, use the Reconstruct tool—it works like an eraser.
In the elephant image, Liquify was used on the rock to the right.
Displacement
When working with textures, the Displace filter is perfect for subtle, almost invisible distortions—like creating reflections in water.
Select a part of the rock near the water, duplicate it to a new layer (Ctrl+J), go to Channels, select the Blue channel (and hide the others), right-click and save it as a new PSD file.
Go back to your layer with the selection and choose Filter → Distort → Displace, set relatively high values since the waves are strong.
Now take the “messy” result, press Ctrl+T, flip vertically, place it near the edge, and erase excess with a mask. Remember how waves move and light falls—reflections should bend accordingly. And they’re not always visible, especially in distant coves.
Don’t forget to use blending modes like Overlay or Soft Light.
In our case, there’s not much to reflect. Only the birds are clearly visible. If the rock were closer in composition, the reflection would require more detail. But if you look at the elephant image, a lot is reflected—including the sky.
Fires
Working with rendering in Photoshop is not only easy but often necessary. Let’s say we want a small flame to appear on a rock. Using the Pen Tool, we draw the shape of a flame.
Go to Filter → Render → Flame and choose a flame style you like. Adjust the parameters and check the result. Don’t forget to use Free Transform, blending modes, and duplicate layers to increase intensity. Yes, we know it’s a whale—but why not add some surrealism? It’s just a rock after all.
You can create fire this way for other scenarios too. Then add smoke, surface distortion (Liquify filter), etc. If you don’t have time to find realistic flame images, it’s easier to just draw your own.
Clouds
Promised skies… the beauty of clouds, mist, sunrise, and so on. Photoshop handles all this wonderfully. Now we have mountains.
Add a new blank layer and apply Filter → Render → Clouds. Change the blending mode to Screen (or whatever suits your image), and add a layer mask. Foreground mountain peaks are usually sharp—paint them back in using the mask, and remove excess clouds from the sky.
And that’s it—a misty fog, maybe from a hot spring nearby… whatever the story, the photo is ready in about two minutes. You can reduce saturation if it’s a sunrise or overcast day.
Spherize
Putting an image inside an object is easy—just mask it, delete the excess, and you’re done. But what if you want it to look natural and fit the object’s shape? That’s when distortion comes in. And doing it manually is hard.
Let’s use a simple example: a snow-covered street inside a Christmas ornament.
Select the ornament and copy it to a new layer. Switch to the landscape layer, Ctrl+click the ornament layer to load its selection. Apply Filter → Distort → Spherize. Adjust the values and see how the image warps.
Erase the excess using the Dodge and Burn Tools, and add highlights and shadows like on the original ornament. You can reapply the filter for a stronger effect.
Lens Flare
Flares are added using a black layer and setting the blending mode to Screen.
Oil Paint
This filter turns any image into something stylized and artistic. Open the image, go to Filter → Stylize → Oil Paint, and tweak the settings.
The result looks like a painting on canvas. Increase the Shine value to see the texture of brush strokes more clearly.
Conclusion
Photoshop has many more filters—some redundant, some focused on specific details. We’ve already covered some of them in the blog, so for instance, we won’t go into Tilt-Shift (the miniature effect) again here.
Either way, when working on a site’s design, browsing through client photos, or searching the web for assets, it’s good to remember that any image can be adjusted, enhanced, or retouched to match your needs. It’s not overkill—it’s craft. Just look at other designers’ work and you’ll find tons of stunning backgrounds. We often feature them in blog materials—travel websites, architecture, real estate, cafés, and more.
Of course, no one wants to sit for hours drawing a single image. But spending even 30 minutes can go a long way—turning an ordinary photo into something brighter, more artistic, or even hyper-realistic. Whether you’re creating a website design, infographic, or editing images—filters are your friend. Take some time to explore them. They can do much more than you’d think—not just impress, but truly transform your creative process.