This paper reports an investigation of digital filtering of areal stratified surface textures. The Gaussian robust filtering technique was established, several typical robust weight functions were adopted and the valley suppression Rk filter of surface topography was also included. The results for areal surface topographies of symmetric ordinate distribution filtering were analysed and compared with those obtained after using the Gaussian regression filter. In these cases the waviness and roughness parameters after using Gaussian and other filters should be similar. The computer-generated areal surfaces that had triangular scratches and measured stratified surfaces were also subjected to filtering. The surface roughness distortion and computation time were compared. Based on the comparison results, some digital filters are recommended.