Photoshop is a powerful image editing tool that is available for web designers and photographers to create desired effects in the images. It is no rocket science to create wonderful designs but then not all tasks can be done manually instead they need handy extensions or we may better call them plugins. Yes, you heard it right plugins as in Photoshop plugins! Creative skills of the designers and these cool plugins together do the trick. With the help of Photoshop plugins any designer or photographer can create desired effects on their images.
50 Best Free Adobe Photoshop Plugins 22 Comments Photoshop is a powerful image editing tool that is available for web designers and photographers to create desired effects in the images. The Photoshop filters are image effects or settings used to change the way a picture looks, and the plugins are extended features like rulers or guide lines, that aren't included with Photoshop by default.
Photoshop Plugins are add-ons that promise to help designers attain additional image effects or performing some difficult tasks thereby enabling them create superb designs. The cool handy Photoshop plugins make a complicated tasks much easier as they help create effective designs that are visually appealing. These days there is the availability of an immense range of free Photoshop plug-ins that help designers a great deal.
This article focuses mainly on designers who keep looking for best free Photoshop plugins that genuinely promise to make their task easier and effective. So, here we present a list of useful Photoshop plugins that are available for free download.
This plugin helps generates blots to obtain nice textures that are seamless .
The plugin Projection provides a collection of interactive perspective effects; it tiles image in infinite space or to repeat edges. Also, it creates bilinear distortion.
Gradient Smithy is a plugin that allows you to create what Photoshop calls the gradient map effect. It allows users to create complex gradients, quite easily.
The Harry’s Filters is a series of filters that comprises of up to 69 different image effects. The main effect categories are called Color, Artistic, Gradients, Patterns, Warp, Noise, En/Decrypt, Other and Nature.
Flat Median is a median-like effect which have some advantages over the regular median filter. With this plugin you can control the level of flatness. At low level of flatness the result would look like a regular blur, while at high level the result would look more contrasty. You can check out the image pinned below to understand what exactly i am talking about.
The plugin Curves 2,enables you toapply a curve with easily controllable shape characteristics.
Icon Plugin for Photoshop promises to enhance Adobe Photoshop with an ability to export and import Windows icons With the help of this plugin users can create compelling icons directly in Adobe Photoshop, using its large arsenal of creative tools and a convenient and familiar design environment.
Julia ‘s curves are a family of mathematical curves well known for their beauties. This plugin simple to track down an interesting curve.
Color MegaMix is a plugin that modifies the colors of any image. It is based on two rows of colors viz 8 source colors and 8 target colors.
Chalkaholic is a Photoshop Plugin that provides uniquely effective artistic rendering options. It is a cool option for those who want flexibility and control in their designs.
Kaleidoscope is a plugin that proceeds to multiple symmetries to obtain beautiful patterns.
Jersey lettering font size chart. Unlike the traditional threshold command of Photoshop, the Fine Threshold plugin allows you to get quickly, anti-aliased and sharp shapes without any fuss.
HSL Plus 1.1 plugin has better color integrity improved control over luminosity and you also have the option of making an automatic contrast then of re-adjusting.
Local equalization is a plugin that can be used to enhance the aspect of a given texture. It can also be used to analyze and optimize an image certain details are barely viewable.
Dreamy Photo gives images a soft romantic feel which gives superb effect for enhancing stock photography, digital camera photos and any image you want to add a warm feel too.
Local Contrast Enhancement brings out detail by increasing the contrast between a pixel’s value and the mean value of the adjacent pixels in a local area of the photo. Users can control the amount of contrast, the size of the local area and the amount of blending with the original photo.
Xpose is an exposure adjustment plugin that offers quick adjustment of highlights and shadows with a rapid preview feedback and a simple, intuitive interface.
Jama 3D is a freeware Adobe Photoshop compatible plug-in filter. It’s the simplest way to create corrugated and cellular like patterns from 2D images.
Water Ripples is a freeware Adobe Photoshop compatible plug-in filter. The highly realistic water ripples effect designer has number of options in an impressive 3D quality. There are random setting generators that produce unlimited variations of rippled surfaces.
This plugin lets users create diptych (double), triptych (triple) and ntych (quadrule+) panels within Photoshop. Choose the alignment, number of rows and columns or hybrid layouts and Tych Panel 2 that will help you create the layout for you.
SuperPNG is a free Adobe Photoshop plug-in for using PNG files. It has more comprehensive support for the format than Photoshop’s included plug-in and provides control over alpha channel handling.
Its a freeware Adobe Photoshop compatible plug-in filter that effectively designs grids and nettings. It has the ability to produce a variety of weave patterns, fabric textures, body art tattoos and skeleton simulations.
It is a Photoshop script that rapidly generates storyboards, stacks, and PDF(s) for CD check-ins, presentations, and whatever else it is you do.
Retro Dots is a free Photoshop plugin that generates dot grids which can be based on selections. This cool plugin is the idea conceived by William Christenson.
virtualPhotographer is a plugin that lets you instantly apply high quality, professional photographic styles to your digital images with just one click.
Its a cool plugin based on a hue wheel subdivided into 6 sectors of 60 degrees. Users can choose a selector color segment and it will restrict the tints of the image for that color.
Craquelure 3D filter creates a wide range of well known craquelure effects that is useful in designing various abstract patterns, decorative surfaces and construction materials.
Sinedot 2 helps generate abstract, random wave patterns for use as background art. It’s phenomenally complex, and has been around for at least a decade but still does the trick and creates some really amazing patterns.
The Oilpaint effect that with the free Pixel Bender plugin for Photoshop CS5 allows users to transform their photographs into images with the visual appearance of oil paintings.
Weaveras the name hints gives a weaving to the images making them look like weave.
The Photoshop Web Font plug-in enables you to design with the same web fonts you will use to ‘go live’. This Photoshop plugin is one of a few solutions that are arriving, allowing you to instantly install and use Google Web Fonts inside Photoshop.
This is an amazing free Photoshop plugin that provides a new panel in Photoshop CS5 and above, enabling you to quickly access real-media preset effects to generate documents with natural paper backgrounds, realistic water color brush strokes and much more.
This Photoshop plugin cuts the image in several blocks does the sorting of colors and they are redistributed as patterns.
The plugin Fur 2 disperses a simple figure line or circle, configurable dimensions/thickness over the whole image. The image below explains what exactly this cool plugin does.
Add a heavy dose of excitement or a subtle amount of elegance to your photos with Perfect Effects 4 Free. You can choose from over 70 effects to enhance and stylize your images including effects to create the popular HDR and vintage looks, textures to add depth and dimension and borders to add a finishing touch.
FREE AAA 8bf plugins for Photo Editors is available for Windows only. Users can download your filter and unzip it into your plugin folder in a subfolder called AAA. Thereafter the plugins will show up under the categories of AAA Filters.
High Pass Sharpening Photoshop plug-ing sharpens images with the high-pass method thereby producing less halos.
While using Photoshop, sometimes using saturation causes some parts of the the images to be over-saturated. To handle this, the selective saturation plug-in can be used as it can define a saturation zone and apply a saturation to a particular area.
Dealing with grids in Photoshop is a big fuss. GuideGuide is a free Photoshop plugin that simplifies creating grids in Photoshop with only a few clicks. It lets you pixel accurate columns, rows, midpoints and baselines that can be created based on your document or selection with the click of a button.
CSS3Ps is a free Photoshop plugin that allows you to convert shapes in a PSD file into CSS3-powered elements.
Cut&Slice me is a great and free Photoshop plugin that can export your assets to different devices in seconds thereby improving your workflow.
Give a soft focus effect to images by setting focus softness, blending mode of the overlayed blured image.
Contrast Mask is a Photoshop plugin that decreases the overall contrast of the image, helps bringing out details in highlights and shadows.
It is a stereogram maker plug-in that enables users to generate Hidden Image Stereograms right in their Photoshop, which is quite convenient. This filter is available for free and can be used both for commercial and non-commercial purposes.
Pano Wrap is a plugin that lets you perform pixel transformations used in panorama stitching.
Photoshop black-white conversion plugin with powerful features enables users to manage tones of every color and there are ready to use popular presets, an option to simulate the effect of color lens and much more.
Mosaic Photoshop plugin is part of the DreamSuite Series product line. It makes your photos look as if they were created out of a mosaic tile. Besides, photo-realistic depth, variable tile size and color options give this effect an infinite number of looks.
Magic Enhancer lets you improve your photos by adjusting its lightness, contrast and color balance. All in all it enhances images that lack lightness or uneven illumination, silhouetted images on dark backgrounds.
Wire Worm is a little plugin that will help you remove wires and other unwanted objects from your images.
Fractalius is a plugin that uses fractal patterns, apparently hidden within the source image to generate procedural effects that are reminiscent of pencil sketches, or stylized light glow streaks.
There are lot many of the Photoshop plugins available for free but we have selected the best ones we came across to let you all make your pick. If you know any of the useful Photoshop plugin that you feel deserve to be the part of the list of best free Adobe Photoshop plugins then we request you to spare some time let us know in the comments below.
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