Create awesome images and amazing designs with our selection of the 30 most creative, useful, time-saving and powerful Photoshop plugins around.
Photoshop is an amazing tool - capable of producing sublime images, high-quality video and, with CS6 Extended, even create very passable 3D renders. All this power offers a world of possibilities - but occasionally it’s worth adding a few optional extras to get the most out of your investment. In this article we’ve lined up some of the best Photoshop plugins available for Adobe's photo editing giant today!
01. virtualPhotographer
- Publisher: Optik Verve Labs
- Price: Free
- Good for: Designers
If you’re a designer in a hurry, or you’re not yet confident using Photoshop to create stylised images, virtualPhotographer is a quick and effective way to get some sophisticated looks in a hurry.
02. CSS3PS
- Publisher: CSS3PS
- Price: Free
- Good for: Designers
This free plugin uses the cloud to perform the calculations required to convert your Photoshop layers into CSS3 layers, complete with live-rendered effects where these are achievable with CSS. So, drop-shadows, strokes, outer glows, text and rounded corners are all converted to CSS3 automatically. Well worth a try to see if it could save you valuable coding time.
03. Silver EFEX Pro 2
This plugin carries an expensive price tag, but the results it can produce are absolutely stunning. Like Nik’s Viveza plugin (number 25 on this list), there’s a wide range of options with easy-to-use controls, but all focussed around producing the best black and white photographs possible. Give the free trial a go and see what you think.
04. Fractalius
- Publisher: RedField
- Price: $39.90
- Good for: Designers, artists
This unusual plugin uses fractal patterns, apparently hidden within the source image, to generate procedural effects that are reminiscent of pencil sketches, or stylised light glow streaks.
05. Dream Suite Ultimate
This all-encompassing suite of effects covers everything from textures to pseudo-3D effects, tonal correction and borders. It’s not cheap, but covers such a wide range of effects that if you want to buy just one plugin, this should be in your shortlist of options.
06. Tych Panel 2
- Publisher: Lumens
- Price: Free
- Good for: Photographers and designers
This straightforward plugin makes it simple to 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 will create the layout for you utilizing Smart Objects and layer masks to avoid destructive editing.
07. GuideGuide
- Publisher: Cameron McEfee
- Price: Free
- Good for: Print & web designers
This simple Photoshop plugin makes it easy to create a grid system in your Photoshop document, hijacking the built-in guides system to create a pinpoint accurate grid according to your chosen settings. You can use negative margins for special hanging columns, separately define individual margins and gutters, and save your preferred options for quick access in the future. Perfect for anyone using a grid to help them create their layouts.
08. Cut&Slice me
- Publisher: Daniel Peruho
- Price: Free
- Good for: Web designers
This super-handy CS6-only plugin makes it easy to export your designs from Photoshop to the web. Rather than rely on Photoshop’s outdated export for web functionality, Cut&Slice me offers a new way of doing things; allowing overlapping slices, multiple button states and even exporting different resolutions of the same assets to cater for different screen sizes and devices.
09. Divine Elemente
- Publisher: Divine Elemente
- Price: $199 (free trial version available)
- Good for: Web designers
This in-depth plugin integrates with Photoshop to allow for the creation of complete, functioning WordPress themes directly from a PSD file. You start by generating a PSD from within the plugin’s own screens, then adapt the boilerplate design to suit your own aesthetic treatment. Once complete, you can export directly to WordPress, and edit otherwise static content using a special WordPress plugin. Ideal for non-technical users who want to get started in web template development.
10. Mr. Stacks
- Publisher: Mr. Stacks
- Price: Free
- Good for: Photographers, designers, film-makers
This handy Photoshop script converts layer comps into a storyboard view, compositing your individual comps into a layout that can be easily output as PDF for printing and sharing with others. This turns Photoshop into a great place to create your blockbuster’s storyboard, doing away with all the tedious manual positioning and exporting associated with generating your own board manually.
11. Exposure 4
- Publisher: Alien Skin
- Price: $249 (free trial available)
- Best for: Photographers
Exposure is a creative tool that allows you to simulate film effects on your digital images, rendering analog-style finishes, borders, scratches and processing in a realistic and rewarding style. Version 4 adds to the already excellent Exposure 3 with additional controls for black/white, split toning and custom colour effects.
12. Texture Anarchy
- Publisher: Digital Anarchy
- Price: $129 (free trial available)
- Best for: Designers
A combination of three different filters for Photoshop that each provide seamless and rich textures you can incorporate into your designs. Some of these are a little predictable, but the sheer range available, along with the ability to generate true fractals, makes this a great addition to Photoshop.
13. Fluid Mask 3
- Publisher: Vertus
- Price: $149 (free trial available)
- Best for: Photographers & Designers
Masking is a fine art all in itself, and while Photoshop has improved its built-in masking tools with CS5 and CS6, there’s still plenty of room for a dedicated tool to help you get the cleanest and most accurate masks possible - especially around problem areas such as hair and fur. Fluid Mask makes this normally laborious process quick and (relatively) easy!
14. Portraiture
- Publisher: Imagenomic
- Price: $199.95
- Best for: Photographers
Portraiture is a combined plugin for Photoshop, Lightroom and Aperture that automates the process of retouching portraits for a perfect-skin look. The plugin automatically smooths skin tones while removing blemishes and, crucially, avoids softening or destroying detail areas such as eyelashes and skin texture.
15. Machine Wash Deluxe
- Publisher: Mister Retro
- Price: $99
- Best for: Designers and Photographers
This filter brings insanely beautiful scratchy textures to your designs and images with accurate, believable weathering and aging effects. Effects include the ability to place artwork on a leather base, render onto wood with the grain visible through the artwork and rust effects. It produces especially nice effects on simple typography.
16. 3D Invigorator
- Publisher: Digital Anarchy
- Price: $199 (free trial available)
- Best for: Designers
While Photoshop has come on leaps and bounds with its own 3D engine and rendering, there’s still room for additional tools that can simplify the process of creating complex 3D scenes and models. This plugin features a simple object editor that uses a pen-like tool for drawing and editing shapes.
17. Blow Up 3
- Publisher: Alien Skin
- Price: $199 (free trial available)
- Best for: Designers and Photographers
Blow Up allows you to create pin-sharp enlargements from photos without compromising on quality. The algorithm is more advanced than Photoshop’s own bicubic filters, which allows the plugin to produce accurate images without artifacts. This makes it a great tool for designers where clients send over images that aren’t of a high-enough resolution.
18. Photomatix Pro
- Publisher: HDR soft
- Price: from $79 (free trial available)
- Best for: Photographers
Photomatix Pro is an High Dynamic Range (HDR) processing and toning tool that integrates with Photoshop either standalone or as a plugin (depending upon which version you go for). This tool goes beyond Photoshop’s built-in HDR processing capabilities, especially with the toning aspects and allows for the creation of extreme HDR images with relative ease.
19. Perfect Effects 3 FREE
- Publisher: onOne Software
- Price: Free
- Best for: Photographers & Designers
Perfect Effects 3 FREE is a handy tool for getting a quick effect on an image, whether that’s a colour treatment, addition of texture and noise, or creative borders. The plugin features an effects library (a bit like the filter gallery in Photoshop) and allows you to stack multiple effects to achieve interesting new results.
20. Noiseware
- Publisher: Imagenomic
- Price: $79.95
- Best for: Photographers
Noise is a problem for everyone, but no more so than Photographers who need to present clients with clean images regardless of the conditions when the shot was captured. Noiseware is a specialist noise-suppression tool that will both remove noise and sharpen at the same time making it a really useful addition to Photoshop.
21. SuperPNG
- Publisher: fnord
- Price: Free
- Best for: Designers
If you’re a regular user of the PNG format, you’ll know that Photoshop can sometimes struggle a bit to render PNGs quickly. SuperPNG aims to fix this by offering more control over your PNG output, allowing for a balance between speed and file size, control over the alpha channel and meta data. SuperPNG’s a handy tool for taking control of your image export, and is free!
22. SiteGrinder
- Publisher: Medialab
- Price: $347 (free trial available)
- Best for: Designers
SiteGrinder is a tool for converting Photoshop mockups into fully functioning HTML and CSS webpages. It includes support for an eCommerce module to further enhance the output, and a CMS-based module adds the ability to maintain websites created using the tool. This isn’t really aimed at web professionals, but could be handy for novice designers.
23. Wire Worm
- Publisher: MV’s Plugins
- Price: Free
- Best for: Photographers
Wire Worm is a free plugin with a single, simple purpose that may save you a lot of time removing telephone wires, fences and similar obstructions in your images. The interface is simple, allowing you to select an area around a wire or other obstruction and have the tool automatically remove it. Results are surprisingly good, especially for the price!
24. EyeCandy
- Publisher: Alien Skin
- Price: $249 (free trial available)
- Best for: Designers
EyeCandy has been around for over a decade, offering a broad range of effects ranging from fire to chrome, glass to extrusions. Useful for many different scenarios, a lot of the effects need dialing down from the default settings to achieve something other than a cheesy result, but there’s a lot of hidden gems in the suite.
25. Viveza 2
- Publisher: Nik Software
- Price: $99.95 (free trial available)
- Best for: Photographers
Viveza 2 is a great solution for applying localised colour and lighting effects to your image. Working in a similar way to Lightroom’s local corrections feature, Viveza allows you to place points on your image and apply a series of effects that are automatically blended to give a professional result. Fantastic results are pretty easy to achieve, and above all else it’s quick to use!
26. ToonIt
- Publisher: Digital Anarchy
- Price: $129 (free trial available)
- Best for: Designers
ToonIt is a straightforward way to turn regular photos into a cartoon-style image, suitable for use in graphic novels or other scenarios where you don’t want photo-realistic images but need to base images on a photographic original. The plugin works automatically on an image, but there is a degree of control you can exercise to change the final output. Niche, but fun!
27. Magic Bullet PhotoLooks 2.0
- Publisher: Red Giant Software
- Price: $199 (free trial available)
- Best for: Photographers
Red Giant is better known for its range of After Effects plugins, but they’ve also brought their Looks plugin to Photoshop, Lightroom and Aperture. This features the same interface as in Magic Bullet Looks for After Effects and features a range of adjustment tools to help you achieve the exact 'look' you desire. A range of usable presets make this a great quick-fix tool.
28. Knoll Light Factory for Photoshop 3.2
- Publisher: Red Giant Software
- Price: $149 (free trial available)
- Best for: Photographers
Similar to its After Effects big brother, Knoll Light Factory for Photoshop allows you to create a host of advanced lens flares, integrating them into your image and adding immediate impact. There are over 100 presets, and you can build new flare effects to your own taste. A great tool for adding instant drama to photographs.
29. Ozone
- Publisher: Digital Film Tools
- Price: $50 (free trial available)
- Best for: Photographers
Digital Film Tools’ Ozone plugin is a toning system for images that duplicates a lot of the functionality found in Photoshop itself, but makes it more accessible to novice users. Based on the zone systemestablished by Ansel Adams, it allows for different parts of an image to be toned according to taste, defining the relative importance and relationship of elements within an image.
30. Photoshop Edge FX
- Publisher: My Photoshop Effects
- Price: $6.90
- Best for: Photographers
Photoshop Edge FX is a simple solution for adding creative borders around your images. The plugin ships with 100 frames and edges and also allows you to create your own mattes for additional borders. Simple and effective, this isn’t offering anything you couldn’t achieve manually, but does the job quickly and efficiently.
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