And if I use an effect in photoshop, do I own the resulting image?

Perhaps. Mere mechanical transformation is not copyrightable, but the decisions about how to apply transformations is.

Under US Copyright guidelines "the work will be copyrightable to the extent that their contributions qualify as authorship ... the requisite level of creativity is extremely low; even a slight amount will suffice"

but in a case where a printer rescaled maps on behalf of the plaintiff:

"the “compilation needed only simple transcription to achieve final tangible form.”54 Because the printer “did not change the substance of [plaintiff’s] original expression,” the court held that the plaintiff was the author"

https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intell...

Sometimes? Depends on how transformative your effect is, and how much creative effort you put into it

That doesn't necessarily negate the copyright claim by the author of the original though. Just like me pressing the shutter button while pointing my phone at the Eiffel tower at night grants me ownership of the image, but if I want to publish it I still get into trouble for publishing a reproduction of a copyrighted light show

The important aspect is human creativity. If you're editing a thing in Photoshop in a way where you have rights to it to begin with, It's presumably starting from a place of human creativity.

So by applying a filter, you're deliberately making a choice that changes your image in a desired manner.

When an AI makes an image, or code, you aren't inherently applying human creativity. Now, if you took an AI image and applied enough traditional talent to modify it on top, is that copyrightable? Nobody knows yet until courts test it.

[dead]

come on. people are doing a lot more than that with LLMs