Plugin Photoshop Free Download

4/10/2019

You can change the look and feel of your Adobe Photoshop images with these free Photoshop filters, and improve your working environment with free Photoshop plugins. They're a great way to easily and quickly customize your Photoshop experience.

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.

You can also use free Photoshop actions, templates, shapes, brushes, and textures to change your Photoshop images.

How to Install and Use Photoshop Filters

Once you've downloaded a Photoshop filter, you'll want to copy the 8BF file into Photoshop's Filters folder to install it. This is usually C:Program FilesAdobeAdobe Photoshop (version)Plug-insFilters.

Installed filters can be accessed from Photoshop's Filter menu.

However, some Photoshop filters are installed through an EXE file so that it installs like a regular program. In those instances, you don't need to copy any files into any program folder; just open the EXE file like you would any application.

How to Install and Use Photoshop Plugins

Photoshop plugins are ZXP files that must be installed using Adobe Extension Manager (unless it downloads as an EXE program file). Just choose Install to browse for the ZXP file.

Installed plugins can be accessed from Photoshop's Window > Extensions menu.

Some of the websites below will explain that they are offering plugins when really they're installed under the Filter menu in Photoshop, and vice versa.

Adobe's Free Photoshop Plugins

What better place to get free Photoshop plugins than Adobe's own website? You can sort the resources by title or rating as well as by newest added or most popular.

Not only plugins and filters are on this page. You'll find extensions, actions, and other things as well.

Adobe's Photoshop plugins are installed a bit differently than the others in this list. You must have a free Adobe account and the Creative Cloud program installed to use the plugins.

To find just the free Photoshop plugins at Adobe's website, be sure to choose Photoshop from the filtering area on the left, and then on the right, sort the results by Price (Low to High).

What We Like

  • Many are rated, from one to five stars.

  • Easy to search for and find what you need.

  • Enormous variety.

What We Don't Like

  • Requires free Creative Cloud program.

  • You must create an Adobe account if you don't already have one.

Mehdi's Free Photoshop Filters

Mehdi has dozens of free Photoshop filters. Each download page has a thorough explanation of the filter as well as screenshots.

Kaleidoscope, Projection, Sorting Tiles, Blots, Weaver, and Contrast Balance are just some of the free filters you can download here.

What We Like

  • Thorough explanation of each plugin with examples.

  • Dozens of plugins available.

  • FAQ page and ability to contact Mehdi for support.

What We Don't Like

  • Dated but useable interface.

  • Windows only; not for MacOS.

The Plugin Site's Free Photoshop Filters

Harry's Filters (formerly VideoRave) is a download at The Plugin Site that lets you get around 70 image effects for Photoshop in one download.

The Plugin Site has other downloads as well, such as Photoshop actions.

On the download page, scroll past the commercial downloads to find the free options. When you're ready to download something from this website, you'll need to fill out the download form, where you'll get the download link in your email.

What We Like

  • Single download saves time.

  • Fast access without layers of menus.

  • Easy to use.

What We Don't Like

  • No MacOS version.

  • No updates since October 2017.

Lokas Software's Free 3D Shadow and Photoshop Filter

Lokas Software has only one free Photoshop filter, and it's called 3D Shadow. I include it in this list because while Photoshop has its own text shadowing feature, I find this one to be much more useful.

You can adjust the blur, axis and offset angle, perspective, and color, as well as select a preset shadow effect, such as Cast in Front, Flat Faint, and Rear shadow.

What We Like

  • Broad range of shadow effects.

  • Easy to use.

RichardRosenman.com's Free Photoshop Plugins

RichardRosenman.com has one page of free Photoshop plugins. Some of them include ones called Diffuse Glow, Box Fitting, Pinch, 3D Sphere, Pixelate, and Solid Border.

The plugins you'll find at RichardRosenman.com have a short description and sample picture to show you what the plugin does.

What We Like

  • Easy to browse through available plugins.

  • Thorough explanation of each plugin’s function.

What We Don't Like

  • Windows only.

  • No new releases since April 2015.

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.

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.

1. Blots

This plugin helps generates blots to obtain nice textures that are seamless .

2. Projection

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.

3. Gradient Smithy

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.

4. Harry’s Filters

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.

5. Flat Median

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.

6. Curves 2

The plugin Curves 2,enables you toapply a curve with easily controllable shape characteristics.

7. Icon

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.

8. Julia World

Julia ‘s curves are a family of mathematical curves well known for their beauties. This plugin simple to track down an interesting curve.

9. Color MegaMix Photoshop plugin

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.

10. Chalkaholic

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.

11. Kaleidoscope

Kaleidoscope is a plugin that proceeds to multiple symmetries to obtain beautiful patterns.

12. Fine Threshold Plugin

Unlike the traditional threshold command of Photoshop, the Fine Threshold plugin allows you to get quickly, anti-aliased and sharp shapes without any fuss.

13. HSL Plus 1.1

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.

14. Local Equalization

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.

15. Auto FX Dreamy Photo Plugin

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.

16. Local Contrast Enhancement

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.

17. Xpose

Xpose is an exposure adjustment plugin that offers quick adjustment of highlights and shadows with a rapid preview feedback and a simple, intuitive interface.

18. Jama 3D Adobe Photoshop Plugin

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.

19. Water Ripples

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.

20. Tych Panel 2

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.

21. SuperPNG

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.

22. Lattice Composer

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.

23. Mr. Stacks

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.

24. Retro Dots

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.

25. virtualPhotographer

virtualPhotographer is a plugin that lets you instantly apply high quality, professional photographic styles to your digital images with just one click.

26. Absolute Color

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.

27. Craquelure 3D Photoshop Plug-in

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.

28. Sinedots II

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.

29. Oilpaint Effect in Pixel Bender Plugin for Photoshop CS5

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.

30. Weaver

Weaveras the name hints gives a weaving to the images making them look like weave.

31. Web Font Plugin

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.

32. NKS5 Natural Media Toolkit

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.

33. Sorting Tiles

This Photoshop plugin cuts the image in several blocks does the sorting of colors and they are redistributed as patterns.

34. Fur 2

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.

35. Perfect Effects 4 Free

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.

36. AAA Blur Options

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.

37. High Pass Sharpening

High Pass Sharpening Photoshop plug-ing sharpens images with the high-pass method thereby producing less halos.

38. Selective Saturation

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.

39. GuideGuide

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.

40. CSS3Ps: Free Photoshop Plugin For Converting Shapes Into CSS

CSS3Ps is a free Photoshop plugin that allows you to convert shapes in a PSD file into CSS3-powered elements.

41. Cut&Slice me

Cut&Slice me is a great and free Photoshop plugin that can export your assets to different devices in seconds thereby improving your workflow.

42. Soft Focus

Give a soft focus effect to images by setting focus softness, blending mode of the overlayed blured image.

43. Contrast Mask

Contrast Mask is a Photoshop plugin that decreases the overall contrast of the image, helps bringing out details in highlights and shadows.

44. Stereogram Lab Filter

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.

45. Pano Warp

Pano Wrap is a plugin that lets you perform pixel transformations used in panorama stitching.

46. B/W Conversion

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.

47. Mosaic

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.

48. Magic Enhancer

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.

49. Wire Worm

Wire Worm is a little plugin that will help you remove wires and other unwanted objects from your images.

50. Fractalius

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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