Huge List Of Highly Extensible Photoshop Plugins

Photoshop plugins are very powerful addons to Adobe Photoshop, which many people seem to forget. Plugins are small extensions to make Photoshop even more extensive while retouching photos, adding simple filter effects and more. I selected separate plugins and featured them, however there were also many huge collections of plugins, so it didn’t make sense to copy&paste massive loads of text and images – I just put screenshot and link to them in that case. Hope You’ll enjoy this one and feel free to add Your comment about Your favorites and maybe links I didn’t list here.

Photoshop plug-ins are .8bf files. After downloading a plug-in, simply place it in the presets>plug-ins folder of the Photoshop’s installation folder (creating a folder with a name defining the plug-in & placing the plug-in files inside the folder will make it more organized).

Photo-Plugins

Local Contrast Enhancement

This plugin’s main purpose is to bring out detail.

This is accomplished by increasing the contrast between a pixel’s value and the mean value of the adjacent pixels in a local area of the photo.

You can control the amount of the increase of contrast, the size of the local area and the amount of blending with the original photo.

Soft Focus

This plugins applies a soft focus effect, which is often useful in portraits or fashion photography. There are controls to adjust the focus softness, the overall strength of the effect and the blending mode of the overlayed blurred image.

Lens Corrector

This plugin corrects barrel and pincushion distortions that many zoom camera lenses.produce.

Just move the sliders to the left to correct barrel distortion, and to the right to correct pincushion .

Many thanks to Martin Vicanek who provided the code for this plugin.

Contrast Mask

This plugin uses a contrast mask to reduce the overall contrast of the image, simultaneously bringing out more detail in both highlights and shadows.

A b/w negative of the image is blurred (with a radius controlled by the “Smoothing” slider) to avoid hard edges and then overlayed with the original, darkening the highlights and lightening the shadows.

The opacity of the overlay is controlled by the “Strength” slider.

Gradient Blur

This plugin applies a gradient blur that can help us draw the viewers attention to the photograph’s main subject.

There are sliders to control the position where the blur starts and it’s strength.

A preview mask can be displayed, and there is a selection between horizontal, vertical and radial blurs.

B/W Conversion

Yet another B/W conversion plugin? Yes, but one with powerful features that allow full control over the final result:

* Total control over the tonal response of Red, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue and Magenta, and the intermediate hues. The user can boost each color’s tonal response all the way up to white or limit it down to black, without affecting the other colors at all .

* The plugin offers presets that accurately simulate the tonal response of the most popular b/w films.

* The plugin can introduce a grain effect of controllable intensity and density.

* An option to simulate the effect of color lens filters, with selectable hue and saturation is also available.

* The user can also apply a toning effect of selectable color and intensity.

* A brightness meter is displayed when the cursor is over the preview window

* All settings can be saved in a parameter file to be available for future use.

Sinedots II

Due to the enormous positive feedback about the sinedots filter I decided to release a slightly advanced version. Basically it’s the same effect with a few extensions:

* enhanced anti alias

* color support

* blend modes

* more parameters for enhanced control

* 16Bit support

* enhanced compatibilty

Shear

This is a conversion of the AfterFx Shear Effect to my new Photoshop framework. A new feature is that a possible (feathered) Selection is now used to alter the strength Parameter locally. This results in some interesting distortions. Compatibility issues are the same as for SinedotsII.

Smart Refinment Filter plug-in

Smart Refinement Filter is an Adobe Photoshop® plug-in for photographic images enhancement. This plug-in allows: sharpness and depth-of-field (DOF) enhancement, and noise (dust) reduction.

Cybia

AlphaWorks – Transparency Effects

A single Photoshop-compatible plug-in filter for quickly removing black or white values and making the region transparent. There are 6 different options for you to choose from, depending on the type of image you are working on (colour photo, mono photo, lineart).

ColourWorks – Colour Modification

A single Photoshop-compatible plug-in with 20 effects for modifying image colour values in different ways. You can use them for subtle correction of your digital photos or experiment with the more dramatic transformations that are available.

Although quite basic these filters can be handy for use on a regular basis.

EdgeWorks – Cool Artistic Styles

A single Photoshop-compatible plug-in with 20 effects for creating dramatic edge and colour modifications. They are best used when experimenting with intense photo transformations for a highly stylized look. They are also handy when creating interesting texture effects.

Screenworks – Simple Pattern Generation

A single Photoshop-compatible plug-in with 30 options for creating screen/mesh patterns.

It provides you with a quick way to add small detailed and repetitive texture overlay effects to areas of your image in one easy step. The single slider setting gives you the option to add the chosen pattern on top of your image, or make the layer background white.

EmbossWorks – Classic Variations

A single Photoshop-compatible plug-in with 20 effects for producing various quick and easy embossing styles. They are handy when you need to add a sense of depth or relief to an otherwise flat image.

SwapShop – Colour Exchange

A single Photoshop-compatible plug-in with 15 effects for switching the colour values in your images. Useful for experimenting with interesting combinations and creating surreal results.

MasterBlaster – Maximum Colour Toning

A single Photoshop-compatible plug-in with 20 effects for “blasting” intense colour into your images. Ideal for when you need to add dramatic impact to your photos or work.

Mezzy – Artistic Grain

A single Photoshop-compatible plug-in with 15 effects for creating a selection of simple grain and mezzo styles. Give your photos a new look with these various effects.

Stereogram Lab Filter

Stereogram Lab Filter allows to generate Hidden Image Stereograms right in your Photoshop, which is quite convenient. This filter is free and you can use it both for commercial and non-commercial purposes, however, distributing the filter itself is not allowed.

LittleInkPot Free Plugins

Xpose

Xpose is an exposure adjustment plugin. It was written to offer quick adjustment of highlights and shadows with a rapid preview feedback and a simple, intuitive interface.

Thredgeholder

The Thredgeholder plugin is the little brother to Thredgeholder Pro, providing edge detection that’s simple to use but highly effective.

Chalkaholic

Chalkaholic renders chalk and charcoal type effects with artistic panache and flair. Providing uniquely effective artistic rendering options, Chalkaholic is the essential addition to any digital artist’s effects collection.

Impression MX Paint Engine

With 6 brush types, 3 brush stroke algorithms, and 88 parameters to give each an unprecedented amount of variety, ImpressionFX is the most versatile paint engine ever created. The sheer variety of effects that can be produced with a single pass of the filter is what makes it worthwhile. You can download trial version.

Luce Photoshop Plugin

Flaming Pear

Imagenomic (4 Plugins)

3D Shadow

This handy tool easily creates various types of 3D shadows from objects such as letters, numbers, shapes and so on. All settings are present in a single window – transparency level, perspective, shadow color and position, X/Y/Z angles, and some others. Even the seasoned designers are surprised by the simplicity of the plug-in and excellent results it generates. The text, processed with this tool immediately grabs the attention of the viewers.

Blinternat Filter Plugins

These filters have no adjustable settings, they have been created to be quicker and easier to use, even though they aren’t as flexible as other filters. Each filter is shown with an image which uses a ‘mouseover’, move the mouse over the image to see what it does, click the image to download a zip file with just that filter in it or click the link in the ‘Download’ section to get all 10 filters there.

Power Retouch photo-retouching plugins

Photoshop Filters factory

Gwhite Photoshop Filters (2 plugins)

Blur Threshold -

This is very useful for reducing noise and jpeg artifacts without blurring edge detail. Only pixels within a selected value and contrast range are blurred.

Custom Blur

- This filter requires an image layer in Photoshop. Controls 1-6 select the position of the pixels for blending, plus or minus, relative to the position of the source pixel.

Neology Filter Factory Filters

There are as total of 23 filters for Mac and PC you can download. You may give them to your friends and pals, but they are not allowed to be sold or included in commercial media as in books, CD-ROMs other Internet sites without my personal permission.

Mezzoforce Photoshop Plugins ( 4 Plugins)

You must register in order to download these plugins. There are plugins like PainterTool, Ice, MetalEaser and Snow.

FilterForge

4 packs of plugins:

Metals

- A set of seven photorealistic metal textures and effects. Metallizing effects, alien-looking or industrial metallic surfaces, rust or aluminum foil, and more – all filters are fully adjustable and support seamless tiling.

Photo Effects

- A set of seven photo enhancing effects. Give your photos a sunny style, apply grunge look or color tints, age the image, and more – all filters are fully adjustable and resolution-independent.

Frames

- A set of seven filters that create frames for your photos. Apply a realistic painted wooden frame or a vignette, give your photos a classic elegant feel or a ragged harsh look, and more.

Distortions

- A set of seven filters that can reshape, distort and deform the source image in various creative ways. The filters can break the image into abstract fragments, generate bubbly effects, apply waves or ripples, and more.

Vanderlee Photoshop Plugins

Auto FX Software (10 plugins)

Not all of these plugins are free, but at least You can try them. I reviewed just one of their plugins – Dreamy photo, because it become my favorite.

Dreamy Photo

Dreamy Photo gives images a soft romantic feel. This is a superb effect for enhancing stock photography, digital camera photos and any image you want to add a warm feel to.

Richard Roseman Filters and Plugins

This page features a growing set of (mostly free) Photoshop filters / plugins coded by Richard Roseman himself. They are not necessarily only limited to Adobe Photoshop and they work with many other graphic applications so long as they adhere to Adobe’s plugin specifications. If you are unsure, click to see the compatibility list.

Variable Invertion

This filter will variably invert color channels of an image.

Channel Modifier

This filter will perform various operations on color channels.

Pixel Quantification

This filter calculates the sum of a selected number of pixels above a level threshold. It has been primarily developed for biological protein strand analysis although it is suitable for various other uses. Thanks to David Ng for conceptualization.

Superformula

This filter generates a wide variety of geometric shapes using the Superformula. The Superformula, sometimes referred to as the Supershape, was discovered by Johan Gielis. It is a simple formula that can be used to generate a wide variety of geometric shapes. Special thanks to Paul Bourke for allowing his algorithm to be ported to this plugin. For more information, please visit Mr. Bourke’s site. Special thanks to Johan Gielis for his input and support. For more information, please visit Johan Gielis’ site and here.

Evaluate

This filter performs various image processing operations through rule-based evaluations. ‘Evaluate’ can be an extremely powerful filter when used to its full potential. With it’s sophisticated rule-based evaluations, it can perform more than 50 different image processing operations ranging from color replacement, color inversion, color swapping, greyscale conversion, color clamping, color multiplication and division, color trigonometrical mathematics, pixel blurring, pixel grain, and much, much more. Any of these effects can be applied to specific color ranges, specific luma ranges, specific color channels or any combination of any of these (and more). ‘Evaluate’ makes specific pixel targeting and isolation very easy to accomplish, providing the user with extremely precise image processing controls.

Lens FX

This filter will generate various distortion effects.

Photoshop Support Plugins

The Digital Artshop Plugins

There are 3 free and great plugins available for free: GREYSCALER (This filter will give you total control and flexability to converting RGB images to black and white.), IMAGE ENCODER (Protect your pictures. Our Image Encoder has 16 million encode/decode options) and IRIDESCENT (The Digital Artshop’s Iridescent filter will apply a pearl like effect to your image).

PluginsWorld

Photoshop Filters

Redfield Plugins

GoPog Plugins

Adobe.com Photoshop plugins

ThePlugins Site

Mehdi – Plugins Photoshop

Xero – Photoshop Compatible Plugins

Freeware Photoshop Plugins

Virtual Photographer

If You didn’t find here, what You were searching for, take a look on other lists I found over blogosphere:

Other Links and references:

Free Photoshop Plugins from TutorialBlog

List of Top 10 Free Adobe Photoshop plugins

10 Free Plug-ins to Enhance Photoshop

50 Powerful Plugins and Filters to Supercharge Your Photoshop

Free Photoshop Plug-ins Collection

25 of the Best FREE Photoshop Plugins and Filters Resource Sites