With the Creative Filters on the Canon EOS 70D, you can add special effects to your pictures. For example, this feature was used to create the three versions of the city scene shown in the following.
You can apply Creative Filters to copies of photos already on your memory card. This approach lets you experiment with different effects while keeping the original photo unaltered. Alternatively, you can add Creative Filters as you shoot in Live View, in which case you get only photos with the effect applied.
You can choose from the following filters:
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Grainy B/W: This filter turns your photos into old-fashioned, grainy, black-and-white photos.
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Soft Focus: This filter blurs the photo so details look soft and fuzzy, as if you had rubbed petroleum jelly on the lens.
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Fish-eye: This option distorts your photo so that it appears to have been shot using a fish-eye lens, as shown in the top-right example in the above figure.
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Art Bold: Do you like your colors bold? Is over-the-top vivid your thing? Give this filter a try.
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Water Painting: Sort of the opposite of Art Bold, this filter sucks some color out of your image. The resulting image looks similar to a painting done in pastel colors.
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Toy Camera: This filter creates an image with dark corners — called a vignette effect. Vignetting is caused by poor-quality lenses not letting enough light in to expose the entire frame of film (like in toy cameras). When you choose this effect, you can also add a warm (yellowish) or cool (blue) tint. For example, this effect was applied with a warm tint to create the lower-left variation in the above figure.
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Miniature: This filter creates a trick of the eye by playing with depth of field. It blurs all but a very small area of the photo to create a result that looks something like one of those miniature dioramas you see in museums. The filter is applied to the city scene to produce the lower-right variation in the preceding figure. This effect works best on pictures taken from a high angle.
Here’s how to try out the filters:
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During playback: Press the Q button to enter Quick Control mode and then select the Creative Filters icon, labeled in the following figure. Or choose Creative Filters from Playback Menu 1 and then press Set. You then see the current photo along with six icons representing the filters and one representing the setting that disables the effects, as shown in the figure. Use the Multi-controller or Quick Control dial to scroll through the icons. The name of the selected filter appears on the screen, but the image doesn’t change to reflect the filter’s effects.
After choosing a filter, press or tap Set to display a screen where you can play with various settings to affect the result of the filter. In some cases, you do see the result of your selection on this screen. Which controls appear depend on the effect; the only one that might stump you is the screen for the Miniature Effect. When you choose this filter, a box appears to indicate the area that will remain in sharp focus when the rest of the image is blurred. Use the Multi-controller to move the box up or down or just tap the spot on the screen where you want to position the box. To change the box orientation from horizontal to vertical, press the Info button or tap the Info icon.
To finish applying the effect, press Set or tap the Set icon. You see a confirmation screen; after you give the camera the go-ahead, it creates a copy of your image, applies the effect, and then displays a message telling you the folder number and last four digits of the file number of the altered photo. If you captured the original by using the Raw Quality setting, the altered image is stored in the JPEG format.
Applying filters during shooting: First, set the camera to Live View mode and then set the camera to any exposure mode except the Handheld Night Scene or HDR Backlight Control scene (SCN) modes. Select one of the JPEG settings as the Image Quality option; the filters don’t work when Raw is the selected format. Also make sure that Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB), White Balance Bracketing, and MultiShot Noise Reduction are turned off.
After the live preview appears, enter Quick Control mode and select the Creative Filters icon. It’s the same one found on the Quick Control screen during playback (see the figure above), except that it appears on the lower-right side of the screen in Live View. When you select it, the individual filter icons appear along the bottom of the screen. This time, as you scroll through the options, the preview updates to show you the result of the filter.
If you see an Info icon after selecting a filter, tap that icon or press the Info button to access the filter settings. Tap the return arrow or press Info again to return to the Quick Control screen; press the Q button to exit the Quick Control screen and return to shooting mode.
For the Miniature effect, you see the focus-zone box after exiting Quick Control mode. Use the Multi-controller to position it. To change the orientation of the box, press the AF Point Selection button. After adjusting an effect, take the picture. The image is stored in the JPEG format.
