Smashing Newsletter
1) Photoshop extended would have a 3D menu, even if it is disabled by video card issues. 2) You have a problem with your video card that would disable 3D use anyway - because it's not supporting the OpenGL requirements for even displaying images in Photoshop, much less working with 3D.
This free plug-in for Photoshop presents several interactive perspective effects: an ability to tile images in infinite space (copy or mirror mode), to repeat edges and to create 3D effects. 1) Photoshop extended would have a 3D menu, even if it is disabled by video card issues. 2) You have a problem with your video card that would disable 3D use anyway - because it's not supporting the OpenGL requirements for even displaying images in Photoshop, much less working with 3D. This is one of the Photoshop plugins which impresses users with an effective tool resembling a pen to edit and draw shapes. 3D Invigorator won't be difficult to get the hang of. You just need to put some extra effort into designing 3D.
Every week, we send out useful front-end & UX techniques. Subscribe and get the Smart Interface Design Checklists PDF delivered to your inbox.
The Photoshop community is chock-full of many free resources, tutorials, tips and techniques, .psd files and even Actions. There is one area that it sadly lacks in, and that is free plugins, filters and panels. Of course, Photoshop has been the pioneer in graphic editor development for a long time now, and with each new version has added an endless supply of features and addons, and as a result, perhaps the need for free plugins or filters is no longer required. Or has it been ignored?
Further Reading on SmashingMag:
Traditionally plugins are an amateur photographer’s best friend, take your shots, fire up Photoshop, apply some well preset filters, and hey presto you have a reasonably professional image. Professional photographers have been known to use plugins as a base and then tweak and add effects to achieve a personal professional touch. Plugins are basically an indispensable tool that do not receive the attention they deserve. And that brings us back to our original mystery, why are there so few free plugins and filters? Do you know the answer? I don’t.
In this A-Z of free Photoshop plugins and filters you will find a few plugins that are (almost) as old as time itself, do not fear, they will work perfectly on all versions of Photoshop and the effect they produce are just as useful now as they were then. If you are looking for a simple and easy method to add effects to an image, this is the post for you.
A-Z of Free Photoshop Plugins & Filters
Watercolor Photoshop Action
Turn your photo — or only parts of it — into a watercolor painting that looks as if it comes straight out of an artist’s treasured sketchbook. To apply the effect, brush onto the areas you want to turn into watercolor art and play the action. More Details and Downloads (affiliate link)
Architectum
Clean edges, precise angles — this Photoshop action turns your photo into a technical sketch. More Details and Downloads (affiliate link)
Smoky Double Exposure
The Smoky Double Exposure add-on elegantly blends the original photo into a watercolor splash. A beautiful play with sharpness and blur. More Details and Downloads (affiliate link)
Spectrum
A sleek look with a subtle, handpainted effect, that’s exactly what Spectrum does. Simply fill in your subject with a color and play the action. More Details and Downloads (affiliate link)
3D Shadow
This handy plugin easily creates various types of 3D shadows from objects such as letters, numbers, shapes and so on. All settings are present in a single window - transparency level, perspective, shadow color and position, X/Y/Z angles, and many more.More Details and Downloads
Camouflage
Use the Camouflage plug-in to make army, fashion and animal camo. The Camouflage plug-in creates seamless images, this means you can use them as textures and patterns for 3D models or as a background for web sites, they can even be used as a pattern for clothing.More Details and Downloads
Chalkaholic
Chalkaholic renders chalk and charcoal type effects with artistic style and flair. It creates a uniquely effective artistic rendering options, it is an essential addition to any digital artist’s effects collection.More Details and Downloads
Circle to Square
With this plugin you can convert any circle into a square.More Details and Downloads
Composer
Update multiple layer comps in Photoshop with just one click.More Details and Downloads
Craquelure 3D
This filter creates a wide range of well known craquelure (krăkloor´) effects, that is useful in designing various abstract patterns, decorative surfaces and construction materials.More Details and Downloads
CSS3Ps
Free cloud based photoshop plugin that converts your layers to CSS3.More Details and Downloads
Cut&Slice me
Use Cut&Slice me to export your assets to different devices in seconds.More Details and Downloads
Dreamy Photo
Dreamy Photo gives images a soft romantic feel. This is a superb effect for enhancing stock photography, digital camera photos and any image you want to add a warm feel to.More Details and Downloads
Duplllicator
Clone layer or group and shift it horizontally or vertically with this extension.More Details and Downloads
EasyMockups
Create Mobile App mockups in seconds. Select form the predesigned mockups, select your background and artwork layers and you’re off.More Details and Downloads
Fine Threshold
Unlike the traditional threshold command of Photoshop, Fine Threshold allows you to get quickly, anti-aliased and sharp shapes.More Details and Downloads
Focal Zoom Effect
Focal Zoom generates the proper perspective and depth creating a focal point or emphasizing a particular portion of your image.More Details and Downloads
Font Awesome
Font Awesome icons right inside Adobe Photoshop.
Fontea
800 Google fonts in your Photoshop. Don’t guess which font will fit in your design. Try it.More Details and Downloads
Harry’s Filters
The famous “Harry’s Filters” is a series of filters that contains up to 69 different image effects. The main effect categories are called Color, Artistic, Gradients, Patterns, Warp, Noise, En/Decrypt, Other and Nature. It also includes filters for changing the image color or mood, for creating artistic effects, producing colorful gradients or impressive patterns, warping images and adding special noise effects to image. Additionally they let you encrypt and decrypt images with 64 bit keys, produce zoom, mirror or paint effects as well as natural effects like lightning, tornado and polar lights.More Details and Downloads
ICO Windows Icon
This plugin gives you an easy method for creating your web site’s favourites/shortcut/bookmark icon in Photoshop.More Details and Downloads
IsometrIcon
IsometrIcon is a free Photoshop plugin that helps to transform shapes into isometric orientation.More Details and Downloads
Ink
More Details and DownloadsInk is a plugin that helps you providing few extra important informations about your mockups by documenting your layers, from typography to effects and shape sizes.
Kaleidoscope 2.1
Kaleidoscope 2.1 is a plugin which uses multiple symmetries to create beautiful patterns, it uses these three spinning effects: Mirror, Copy, Transition and Blend.More Details and Downloads
Layrs Control
Remove unused Effects, flatten all Layer Effects, delete empty Layers or rasterize Smart Objects with just one click.More Details and Downloads
Long Shadow Generator
Long shadow design is still popular. The Long Shadow Generator is an easy-to-use tool that lets you create that effect with just a single click.More Details and Downloads
Luce
Luce blends radial or directional light beams into your image. There is a text box for adjusting the intensity of the effect.More Details and Downloads
Mosaic
Mosaic makes your photos look as if they were created out of a mosaic tile. Photo-realistic depth and variable tile size and color options give this effect an infinite number of looks.More Details and Downloads
Mood Lighting Effect
Mood Lighting lets you apply a darkening effect enhancing the dark mood of any digital image.More Details and Downloads
Nik Effects Collection
Create stunning images faster. Add the power of the Nik Collection by Google to your workflow today.More Details and Downloads
Noise Reduction
The freeware version of Boundary Noise Reduction lets you remove noise.More Details and Downloads
ON1 Effects
Effects 10 Standard Edition includes a select number of stackable filters, presets, borders, and textures from ON1 Effects 10.More Details and Downloads
Pixel2Vector
This little Photoshop tool may save you a plenty of time. It converts your pixel shape in a vector shape or in a Custom Shape Tool.More Details and Downloads
Polar Projection
Photoshop Plugin for 3D 360-degree stereographic projections.More Details and Downloads
Retinize It
The best Photoshop tool for preparing designs for iOS or optimized for Retina-display websites.More Details and Downloads
Retrodots
Retrodots is a simple plugin that generates dot grids which can be based on selections.More Details and Downloads
Sharpen Details Effect
Sharpen Details brings out the highlights in your digital images and brings clarity to the details in seconds. Give photos a crisp clean look.More Details and Downloads
Seamless Textures
The free Seamless Textures Generator is a simple but time-saving photoshop extension. It generates with just one click a seamless pattern from your picture.More Details and Downloads
Photoshop Cs5 Plugins Free Download
Sinedots
Old demo effect which uses soem simple sinus calculations to generate nice patterns like this one.More Details and Downloads
Skeuomorphism.it
Become a flat design pro in seconds with this simple photoshop plugin.More Details and Downloads
Swatchy
Folders for your swatches in Photoshop.More Details and Downloads
Vibrations 1.1
This plugin has two different methods (“Levels” and “Lines” ) for creating a streak effect of your images . The filter has an inbuilt blur, in order to ensure smoothness.More Details and Downloads
virtualPhotographer
virtualPhotographer lets you instantly apply high quality, professional photographic styles to your digital images…with just one click.More Details and Downloads
Water Ripples
The highly realistic water ripples effect designer has numerous options as well as an impressive 3D quality. The random settings generator produces unlimited variations of rippled surfaces.More Details and Downloads
Weaver
This plugin creates a weave effect of your images.More Details and Downloads
Plugin Development Resources
- Filter Meister This is another free plugin that allows users to create there own plugins. This plugin offers extensive documentation, step-by-step tutorials and free downloadable samples. This type of plugin is perfect for anyone with limited knowledge of any script language.
- Photoshop SDK If you are feeling really adventurous, you could develop a plugin using the Photoshop SDK. Previously you would have to pay just shy of $200 for the SDK, it is now free, the only thing you have to do is register with Adobe.
- Photoshop Scripting A script is a series of commands that tells Photoshop to perform one or more tasks, Photoshop CS4 supports scripts written in AppleScript, JavaScript or VBScript. Download the latest documentation on scripting here: Photoshop Scripting Documentation.
Ready to become a Photoshop power-user? Good, because the Photoshop plugins, add-ons, and extensions we list in this post will supercharge the already impressive capabilities of Adobe’s preeminent software.
Yes, Adobe Photoshop CC is outstanding on its own. But there are plenty of features that users wish they had access to but don't. Plus, there’s no way that Adobe could’ve packed in every add-on, extension, or plugin and still kept the software at its current price point.
Lucky for you, not all of the plugins you’ll read about today cost money!
That’s not to say that you should only look for free plugins. Some of the premium Photoshop plugins we list are so good, you’ll want to buy them immediately — if you’re really serious about upping your Photoshop game, that it. But before we get into the best free and premium Photoshop plugins for 2020, let’s quickly cover how to install Photoshop plugins:
How to Install Photoshop Plugins
Here’s a simple way to install Photoshop plugins:
- Open Photoshop.
- Select Edit from the dropdown menu, and select Preferences > Plugins.
- Check the 'Additional Plugins Folder' box to accept new files.
- Download a plugin or filter to your desktop.
- Open your Program Files folder and select your Photoshop folder.
- Open your Plugins folder, found inside your Photoshop folder.
- Drag your new Photoshop plugin from your desktop into the Plugins folder.
- Reopen Photoshop and find your new plugin under Filters in the dropdown menu.
Now that you know how to use Photoshop plugins, let’s take a look at some of the best free and premium Photoshop plugins available in 2020.
Note, if you prefer Sketch, check out our guide to the best Sketch plugins.
Best Free Photoshop Plugins
As the old saying goes, “the best things in life are free.” Of course, these plugins may not be “the best things in life” (unless Photoshop IS your life), but they’re pretty good and can be used completely free of charge.
1. Camera Raw
Adobe Photoshop Cs5 3d Plugin Download
Camera Raw is a Photoshop plugin that lets you edit and enhance raw files from your digital camera, along with JPEG and TIFF files. If you’re unfamiliar with a raw file, it’s simply the unprocessed picture data from your digital camera.
With the Adobe Camera Raw plugin, you can sharpen raw pictures, set white balance, and adjust the contrast among many other features.
The best part is, Camera Raw uses non-destructive editing, which means it doesn’t alter the original picture file in case you want to revert back to it after you’ve finished editing. This plugin has been a must-have tool for photographers and should definitely be in your editing toolkit.
2. Ink
Ink is one of the best free Photoshop plugins on this list. It allows designers to create useful mockups and user interfaces, which lets an inexperienced Photoshop user — like a developer, for example — understand the design elements within a coding framework.
In other words, Ink makes it easy to communicate your design by generating full specs such as text formatting, layer styles, and dimensions.
This is especially helpful if you have to hand off work to a developer on GitHub and want to ensure that he or she will accurately interpret your design. Fortunately, this handy app can be accessed and used for the low price of zero dollars!
3. Texture Anarchy
Texture Anarchy is a Photoshop plugin that offers its users a library of different filters and textures to edit their photos with. What sets it apart from similar plugins like ON1 Effects is the fact that the textures it produces are based on fractal noise, which makes it easy to create natural images like fire, smoke, or marble.
If you're new to Photoshop, or photo editing in general, and the above paragraph sounds confusing, don't worry. Texture Anarchy is actually pretty easy to use. It even comes with presets to help you get started on the right foot.
4. FlatIcon
FlatIcon is a Photoshop plugin that will give you access to thousands of free vector icons, which can be downloaded in multiple formats such as SVG or PNG.
With FlatIcon installed, you can search through its database of icons from within Photoshop and insert them directly into your design panel. What kind of icons are we talking about? Just about anything! FlatIcon has millions of icons available for use.
Now, FlatIcon does have thousands of icons available for free. But, they require attribution to use legally. Alternatively, you can sign up for a FlatIcon subscription and get access to many more, attribution-free icons and priority support. FlatIcon plans start at $8.25 a month.
Best Premium Photoshop Plugins
As Warren Buffett once said, “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”
While these premium Photoshop Plugins come with a price tag, they pack a serious punch and provide artists, photographers, and casual Photoshop users alike with tons of value. Here are the six paid plugins that we believe will make the biggest impact on your output and workflow:
1. RH Hover Color Picker
RH Hover Color Picker is a Photoshop color plugin that isn’t ugly or cumbersome (unlike the color picker built into Photoshop) and gives you more control over the colors you pick with its set of customizable sliders.
It’s aptly named the “Hover” Color Picker because it only reveals itself when you hover over its minimized version, and then conceals itself once you’re done using it. Convenient!
RH Hover Color Picker is really easy to use and will speed up your Photoshop workflow dramatically. Luckily, it can be had for just $16. Make the process of picking colors much easier and more enjoyable with this premium plugin.
2. ON1 Effects
ON1 Effects is a Photoshop plugin that gives you access to hundreds of built-in presets, filters, LUTs, textures, and borders. These effects can then be combined, blended, and otherwise customized to create a unique look for each of your photographs.
If you’re looking for an all-in-one tool for adding complex effects to your photos, ON1 Effects is the solution you need. Get it for a one-time payment of $59.99.
3. Fluid Mask 3
Fluid Mask 3 is a Photoshop plugin that can be used to remove backgrounds and perform cutouts — a necessity for most modern photographers and graphic artists.
Masking, i.e. making part of a layer invisible, is a delicate and often difficult process. Fluid Mask 3 is one of the few plugins that will give you a clean and accurate mask, especially with problem areas like hair and fur.
Even though Fluid Mask 3 costs $99, its ability to detect edges, blend layers, and simplify painstaking tasks makes the high price tag worth it. That's why big companies like Disney, NBC, and Macy's use it on a regular basis.
4. Noiseware
Noiseware is an award-winning Photoshop plugin for noise reduction. Noise is the colorful grains or discoloration found in Photographs that give it a splotchy or blurry look. In simple terms, it's the part of your photographs that you usually don't want.
Noiseware removes graininess from images and sharpens them simultaneously, allowing you to clean up your photos quickly and professionally.
Although it costs $79.95, it justifies its premium price tag with unparalleled targeted noise reduction that few other plugins can even come close to matching.
Photoshop Cs5 3d Plugins
5. PortraitPro
Have you ever taken a picture of yourself and thought, 'Oh no, is that what I really look like?' Don't be ashamed, it's happened to all of us. The camera can be quite unkind at times. When you're not happy with the results of your latest portrait, get PortraitPro.
PortraitPro is a Photoshop plugin that helps users retouch and edit portraits without giving them a “Photoshopped” finish. It prides itself on being a software built to enhance human beauty without making faces look plastic or fake.
PortraitPro accomplishes this feat by using a slider interface to sculpt and refine a subject’s features. Use this editing tool to smooth skin, apply makeup, correct poor lighting, change hair color, and more.
Whatever aspect of your portraits that you need to adjust, PortraitPro can help you do it for a one-time payment of $89.90.
6. Machine Wash Deluxe
Last, but certainly not least, we have Machine Wash Deluxe, which is a Photoshop plugin that adds scratchy, weathering effects to your photos. When you want your images to have that cool, retro vibe, Machine Wash Deluxe is the app you need.
The plugin comes with over 3,500 presets, which can be used to texturize and alter photographs in thousands of different ways and make them look old, vintage, or otherworldly.
Machine Wash Deluxe is an incredibly fun plug-in to play with and will help you create unique images that stop viewers in their tracks. It will cost you $99 to access. But if you have a little extra cash to spend, you’ll love the abstract photo transformations you can make with it.
Honorable Mention: CloudApp
CloudApp isn’t technically a Photoshop add-on, plugin, or extension — at least not yet. But it will help you get the “raw materials” you need to create great photos.
Our free screen recorder lets you record videos and take screenshots on mac and win of virtually anything, edit them in Photoshop, and then pass them on to your developer. If your developer has questions, they can take a screenshot of your finished product, annotate it, and send it back to you. You’ll then be able to comment on those annotations and easily make the required changes.
CloudApp is available as a Mac App, a Windows App, and as a Chrome Plugin. This means that just about anyone can create visual content from their desktop device of choice!
If you want to streamline your Photoshop workflow and easily create the stunning visual materials needed to get the job done, consider signing up for CloudApp — it's free.
In Conclusion:
There you have it, the 10 best photoshop plugins in 2020. If you regularly use Adobe's legendary software, these tools will help you supercharge your workflow and create better visual content. Now you just have to decide which ones you want to use!
And don't forget about CloudApp! Our visual communication software is a great way to create the raw materials you need to edit inside of Photoshop. From screenshots to annotated images, use CloudApp to capture anything on your computer screen. Get started today for free!
Comments are closed.