Effects filters
Photoshop Elements comes with a huge range of special effects filters, which are located under the Filter menu at the top of the main screen. Many of these are legacy items that have been left over from previous iterations of this application – often very early versions. Because many of these are quite long in the tooth, it's quite difficult to find a practical use for them – personally, I think a lot of them could be removed to make space for newer features – but this is just an opinion. Try them out for yourself and see what you think.
One reason for not being impressed with some effects filters is because there are many excellent software plugins on the market that do the job of special effects far better than what Elements has to offer. That being said, you'll probably note that I have written about the Gaussian Blur filter in particular, and how useful it is, on a number of occasions. The Filter Gallery exists so that, rather than...