Photoshop plugins are simply an Add-on to assist you in your project. They can help you in picking color schemes faster, providing you a color palette or a collection of ready to use image enhancement and designing tool. Plugins are a great way to enhance your Photoshop or other designing software and tailor the experience to your needs.
Plugins are designed to unlock new features, optimize your productivity and save you time, but it can be difficult trying to find the ones that suit your workflow. There are thousands of plugins available on internet to choose from and they can be reliable & easy to use. Not only in designing, but plugins are also used in video editing in the form of LUTs, Presets, and Transitions.
These plugins are range from assisting a designer in photography, logo design, color scheme, and other form of creative work. Graphic designers can choose from a list of plugins and apply on their projects.
Luckily for you, we've assembled a list of all our favorite Photoshop plugins (free and premium), and provided a little explanation of what they do, just to make sure you are choosing the right plugins for you.
Calling all portrait photographers! If you’re searching for a plug-in that can help you to smooth skin tone and remove imperfections without removing skin texture altogether, this is the tool just for you. What makes this plug-in so great is that it’s compatible with Aperture, Photoshop as well as Lightroom.
Fixel Edgehancer is the perfect plug-in for those who are just starting to use Photoshop. In short, it’s a quick way to emphasize the edges without increasing the surrounding pixels’ contrast.
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.
Also Read: Factors That Makes A Perfect Logo #3
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!
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.
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.
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.
Also Read: Factors That Makes A Perfect Logo #1
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.
This Photoshop plugin provides a smart palette system that intelligently adapts to the colors you choose and offers a wide range of strips with slightly functions. Chameleon Adaptive Palette can offer palette variations or lock as a static palette. It's a feature-rich plugin but shouldn't weigh on your CPU.
It's easy to find yourself getting lost in a sea of brushes in Photoshop, but the Photoshop plugin BrushBox provides a solution. BrushBox enables you to organize your brushes more efficiently by putting them in groups, which can be color coded (you can even add different backgrounds).
You can tag your favorite brushes and you can override a brush's default settings to save you from having to make the same changes over and over again.
The AD Brutus Symmetry Photoshop plugin makes it easy to explore symmetrical designs or drawing. Just place your grid or guide on your work and see it reflected where you choose. You can flip layers or selections and also rotate your work. Saving is easy too since you can save either the active layer or a merged PNG version of the current view with just one click.
Also Read: Factors That Makes A Perfect Logo #2
It might not be the most useful plugin, unless you work consistently with patterns, but it's great fun to play around with.
Powtoon is a free Photoshop plugin that lets you turn your designs into animated video content with a single click. Choose to export all Artboards or select Artboards, then enhance your animated design with custom animation, stock footage and imagery, or add a soundtrack.
Finally, you can export directly to YouTube, Facebook, MP4, Vimeo and more. It has some great reviews.
There are certainly many Photoshop plugins to choose from, depending on what type of design you do and what effects you’re trying to achieve. The point is that you’re not limited to using Photoshop’s stock tools for all of your editing needs. Sometimes, a little outside help is just the thing you need to get the job done right.
