While Adobe Photoshop is a powerful, creative platform, using plugins can help to extend its capabilities and use it to its full potential. Using an add-on can help you perform tedious or difficult tasks in a more efficient manner, enabling you to spend more time on design.
There are thousands of plugins to choose from, but many are outdated and no longer work with updated versions of Photoshop. We've collected the best free plugins you can download, install and start using right away.
Application (Version): Adobe Photoshop CS5 Task Description: How to I create a picture package? Tutorial Date: 22 May 2009, by Arnousone Chanthalyxay. Updated 18 June 2010, Kasidy Stafford Select 'File' How to create a picture package in Adobe Photoshop CS5 - 1.
See also: 12 Premium Photoshop Plugins for Designers
We focus on a variety of free plugins best suited to web and graphic design, to help you work faster and more productively. The plugins can help with a range of functions, including layer control, exporting assets, icon exploration, guides and fonts.
Photoshop is, indeed, a powerful tool for editing your photos. But if you want to make sure you maintain consistency in your editing workflow or if you simply want to speed up the editing process, you’ll need a quality Photoshop plugin.
From applying HDR effects to converting your images to black and white, there is a plugin for every situation and in this post, we’ve gathered the best free Photoshop plugins for photographers.
You might also like this collection of free Photoshop plugins for UI designers.
- Ink, a Photoshop plugin. 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.
- The only Photoshop plug-ins those programs support are Filter plugins. (But they're most commonly known as Photoshop plugins, rather than filters.) See Also: Why is the Photoshop Plug-in greyed out? Why can't I click on it? How to use Photoshop Plugins in multiple programs at once.
- Adobe Photoshop CS5 Optional Plugins was designed as a complementary package for Photoshop CS5, boasting a collection of features that have been removed in the making of the giant.
HDR Sharpener Tool
This tool makes it easy to create HDR-like effects for your images instantly. It will increase the dynamic range of the image and sharpen it in a non destructive manner.
KinemaPhoto-LITE
This Photoshop extension makes it easy to unleash your creative potential creating cinemagraphs, GIFs, and other animations. You will be able to create still images from a video layer, create video loops, and more.
CineStock Photoshop (Envato Elements)
This resource gives you the 18 Photoshop actions to simulate the look of cinematic effects popularized by movies and television series. Each action contains all the adjustment layers and is non destructive so you retain your original.
Photo FX Photoshop Plugin
Gain access to 18 cool effects and filters to use when editing your images. The plugin includes 8 different filters, 9 different light leak effects, and a film grain effect that you can use immediately.
Tint and Black & White Conversion Plugin
This Photoshop tint plugin is perfect for adding tints to an image for artistic effect. Quickly apply a range of color tones or convert images into black and white for that retro feel.
Skin Beauty Retouch Plugin
Easily retouch skin tones with this plugin. With a 1-click application you can make any skin tone free of blemishes and look beautiful. This is a handy plugin when you want to make all your photos look their best.
Double Exposure (Envato Elements)
Adobe Photoshop Cs5 Extended
This Photoshop plugin gives you access to a set of 4 actions that simulate a double exposure effect. This effect works well with other Photoshop actions you may have installed.
Enhanced Sub-Pixel Diffusion
Thanks to this Photoshop plugin, you’ll have the power to perform sub-pixel diffusion effects. With sub-pixel diffusion you can apply this effect when and where you would need to apply antialiasing.
Generate Ascii Art
This Photoshop plugin makes it easy to convert your images into an ASCII stylized image. ASCII art works by mapping heavier toned ASCII characters to dark areas of your image and lighter toned ASCII to the lighter areas. Not all images will translate well.
Oil Paint Photoshop Plugin
Convert any of your image into a realistic painted look without all the effort. In one click you can transform any image with a resolution size of 1000 to 4000 pixels.
Anaglyph Photoshop Actions (Envato Elements)
Save time, money and effort with this Photoshop resource. You will be able to quickly apply one of 4 basic anaglyph or 11 experimental anaglyph actions with a simple nondestructive click.
Generate Barnsley Fern Fractals
With this Photoshop plugin you will be able to create wonderfully looking fractal designs. Generate eye catching patterns in any color with a little mathematical help and create random fractals or manifest your creative streak with controls for asymmetry and scaling.
White Balance / Highlight Recovery Plugin
This powerful Photoshop plugin will apply a white balance to your images. This makes your photos brighter and have more contrast. Using images shot in a RAW format will produce the best results.
Halftone Print Simulation Plugin
This Photoshop plugin will simulate halftone imagery through the use of dots. The images you create with this plugin can be printed with each color channel independently or all together. You can lock or unlock the color channels for black and whites or creating masks.
Photoshop Cs5 Apk
VHS Photoshop Action (Envato Elements)
With this plugin you will be able to quickly apply a glitched or VHS look to all your photos. Simply install the plugin, load your image and click play on the plugin. You will receive 1 action file, 1 pattern file, 1 file with brushes and instructional PDF.
Lens FX Plugin
Use this plugin to achieve special effects for all of your images. Choose from a pinch, push, sine variants, concave and convex versions as well as waves or ripples. This plugin can help you create wonderful pieces of art.
stylize!
Stylize is a wonderful and artistically based plugin that transforms your images into something that looks painted, water colored, or drawn. With dozens of styles to choose from, this will be a welcome addition to your Photoshop workflow.
Multi Purpose Pixelation Photoshop Plugin
With this plugin you will be able to make pixel art out of any of your images. This plugin supports an 8 and 16 bit channels with a color channel mode for professional workflows.
Watercolor Photoshop (Envato Elements)
This Photoshop action can be used to create digital artwork in 1 click. This plugin will generate the watercolor art and multiple layers that you can further tweak and customize.
Remove.bg Plugin for Adobe Photoshop
With this plugin you will save time working on backgrounds. Quickly and easily remove the backgrounds, even around challenging edges like hair. Use the layer mask to quickly remove or restore regions of an image.
Composition Grid Plugin
Photoshop Cs5 Contact Sheet Plugin Free
This plugin will help you generate a grid that you can apply over your photo for easier editing. Each grid is generated as a separate layer so that you can apply the theory behind the Rule of Thirds, Golden Ratio, and Dynamic Symmetry.
Generate Randomly Fitted Boxes
Quickly and easily generate a mosaic of randomly sized boxes out of your images. This is a wonderful way to give your images a whole new artistic look. The box fitting tool provides control over how many boxes to create, the maximum size allowed, as well as an option to sample color from the original image or to use custom colors.
Summer Duotone (Envato Elements)
Save time with your image editing workflow with this resource highlighting the summer colors. This resource gives you 20 custom summer duotone actions to help get your summer design juices flowing.
Variable Channel Inversion Plugin
This simple but unique plugin allows precise, independent and variable color channel inversion. This will yield impressive results when full control of each channel is used. Choose colors from 8 or 16 bit channels for your project.
Action Launcher Extension
If your Photoshop has amassed a large collection of actions and actionsets then you will want to get this launcher. Quickly and easily find all of your actions, sort them through a favorites selection, as well as run the actions right from the launcher.
Highpass Sharpen Photoshop Plugin
This Photoshop plugin introduces another high fidelity method of sharpening your images by using highpass frequencies. This is a method used by professionals in the production industry and a technique favored by professional photographers and photo retouchers alike.
Lens Vibrant Effects (Envato Elements)
With just a click you can apply any of the twenty vibrant filters to make great images that can be used for blog posts, book covers, social media, and more.
PolarProjection Generator
This polar projection plugin turns your panorama pictures into their own little worlds. The plugin takes the pain out of the long process to manually morph your panorama images into stereographic projections.
Automate Diptych & Triptych Layouts
Tych Panel is an extension that automates the creation of triptychs and diptychs. It also offers an easy way to set up your rows and columns for your image placement.
Stock Photo Site Photoshop Plugins
Photoshop Cs5 Contact Sheet Plugin Chrome
Use this article to fill up your creative library with useful Photoshop plugins that will save you hours of time during the photo-editing process.