GIMP

Just been checking out 3.2 RC1 and the implementation of discrete 'effects only' layers. This is something I've been banging on about since the 3.0 release and I'm really happy to see it! Now, a filter (or set of filters) can be on its own layer and have its own mask and affect all layers below it.

To do it you need to create a new layer group without any layers in it and set the layer mode to 'Pass through'.

This is going to be awesome for my workflow. One thing I'm going to do is to set up a project with my most used filters and presets as preconfigured layers and then basically just paste them onto new projects :)