Swirl

Swirl smears your selection with fine brush strokes. You can swirl images, simple color patterns, or solid colors. Swirls can form tiny whirlpools or sprawling clusters of streaks. Used properly, Swirl adds an impressionist touch to your compositions.

## Control Descriptions

### Basic Tab

Add Swirl to Solid Color

Select this option to Swirl the solid color of your choice. You can select a color using the eye dropper, the default color palette, or choose the foreground or background color. You can also choose one of the six most recently sampled colors.

Add Swirl to Original Image

Select this option to swirl the colors in the original image.

Random

Choose this option to apply a random pattern of swirls to your selection.

From Image Features

Select this option to force brush strokes to line up along contrasting image details.

Swirl applied to the original image. On the left a random pattern was applied. On the right, the swirl patterns are derived from image details.

Feature Size

Controls the average spacing between the center of the brush strokes. Lower values create lots of tiny, closely spaced whirlpools. Large values create larger individual whirlpools—sometimes with no visible centers.

Left to right: Increasing Feature Size.

Smear Length

Controls the length of the streaks in your selection. Small lengths yield an effect like shag carpet. Larger values smear the streaks to greater lengths, yielding either long radial spokes, or—depending on the Twist percentage—uninterrupted whirls or eddies.

Twist (%)

Controls the appearance of rotation in each swirl. Zero creates relatively straight smears; 100 yields a whirlpool shape. With extremely short smear lengths, the difference in appearance is negligible.

Streak Detail

Adds contrast to the flowlines in swirls, making the streaks more visible and focused.

Seamless Tile

Select this box to create a repeatable pattern with no seams.

Random Seed

Controls the random elements of this filter. Click it until you get a result you like.