Audio Cookbook’s John Keston is doing some interesting experiments with processing sound using Photoshop:

Sound designers, musicians, producers and engineers are all familiar with manipulating sound through the use of audio processing. Most examples of processing, like filters, reverbs, and delays produce a relatively predictable result. I’m interested in processing that has an unpredictable result.

I created a simple pattern with an electric piano patch and opened it in Photosounder. Without changing any settings I immediately saved the sound as a bitmap image.

Next, I opened the image in Photoshop and started experimenting with filters. Once I had some filtered images I loaded them back into Photosounder to see how they sounded. Gaussian blur and Liquefy created some unique effects, but my favorite of the bunch was Glowing Edges. This filter seems to transform the electric piano into a haunting choral passage.

Check out the full post, with audio examples, at the AudioCookbook site.