Free Photoshop Plugins for Photographers: Best Reviews | Articles | Photo, video, optics

A plug-in is, in fact, a pro­gram with­in a pro­gram that extends the capa­bil­i­ties of Pho­to­shop and speeds up work in it. With the help of them, you can apply tint­ing to the pho­to, make a styl­ized effect, increase sharp­ness, and remove noise. Almost every­thing that plu­g­ins do can be repeat­ed in Pho­to­shop with­out them, but it will take much more time.

We’ve round­ed up some inter­est­ing free Pho­to­shop plu­g­ins that will help the aspir­ing pho­tog­ra­ph­er improve the qual­i­ty of their pho­tos in a frac­tion of the time, and we’ve test­ed them all our­selves to make sure they work.

Absolute Color

A small plu­g­in that recol­ors a pho­to in col­ors of the same shade. For exam­ple, red and orange, green or blue-blue. Suit­able for ton­ing pho­tos and cre­at­ing a cer­tain mood. The good thing is that in one click it allows you to reduce the num­ber of extra­ne­ous shades.

On the left is a pho­to before repaint­ing. The plug-in adjust­ed all the col­ors to one red-yel­low gamut / Illus­tra­tion and pho­to: Eliza­ve­ta Lentchevicha, Photosklad.Expert

Of the minus­es — the plu­g­in repaints absolute­ly all col­ors. So, if you are pho­tograph­ing a por­trait, the skin will also be affect­ed. But this is easy to get around — just add a mask to the plug-in lay­er and use a black brush to erase the cor­rec­tion where it is not need­ed.

For infor­ma­tion on how to use masks and what they are, read our detailed guide.

You can down­load the plu­g­in from this link.

How to install the plugin

To start installing the plu­g­in, fol­low the link and click the Down­load now but­ton / Illus­tra­tion: Eliza­ve­ta Lentchevicha, Photosklad.Expert

1. Down­load. Unzip it and open the abscolor12 fold­er.

There you will see two files — for 32-bit and 64-bit sys­tems. Most mod­ern com­put­ers now run on a 64-bit sys­tem, but it’s bet­ter to check it your­self rather than rely­ing on sta­tis­tics. For exam­ple, in the same Pho­to­shop menu Help / Help — Sys­tem Infor­ma­tion / Sys­tem Info. You need the third line from the top. It will look some­thing like this: Oper­at­ing Sys­tem: Win­dows 10 64-bit. The last num­bers will tell you about your sys­tem: 64-bit or 32-bit.

2. Depend­ing on the bit­ness of your sys­tem, copy one of the nec­es­sary files (the author has absolutecolor1‑2 (64 bits).8bf).

3. Go to where your Pho­to­shop is installed and find the Plug-ins fold­er there. Paste your file into this fold­er.

The path to the fold­er with Plu­g­ins, if you did not change the disk where you installed Pho­to­shop dur­ing instal­la­tion / Illus­tra­tion: Eliza­ve­ta Lentchevicha, Fotosklad.Expert

4. Done! Now you can open Pho­to­shop. The installed plu­g­in will appear in Pho­to­shop in the fold­er Fil­ter / Fil­ter.

half tone

Turn a pho­to into a paint­ed poster in a cou­ple of clicks! This effect to styl­ize pic­tures is called “halftone effect”. Its essence is that shades are trans­mit­ted by sep­a­rate dots paint­ed in a cer­tain col­or. Of course, the cus­tomer is unlike­ly to be hap­py if all the pho­tos turn into car­toon illus­tra­tions, but if such an image is print­ed, it can be an inter­est­ing gift.

The plu­g­in styl­izes the pho­to, split­ting it into small cir­cles or squares. This exam­ple has a white back­ground, but you can choose any col­or / Illus­tra­tion and pho­to: Eliza­ve­ta Chechevit­sa, Fotosklad.Expert

You can down­load the free plu­g­in from the link.

How to Install a Plugin for Photoshop

1. Fol­low the link and find the Free Down­load but­ton.

After press­ing the but­ton, an archive called Halftone.zip will be down­loaded to the com­put­er. Unpack it to get access to the fold­er with the plu­g­in / Illus­tra­tion: Eliza­ve­ta Lentchevicha, Photosklad.Expert

2. In the unpacked fold­er, find the file halftone.8bf (this is the plu­g­in) and copy it.

3. Move the copied plug-in to the Plug-ins fold­er where Pho­to­shop is installed. Most com­mon address: This com­put­er — Dri­ve C — Pro­gram Files — Adobe — Adobe Pho­to­shop 2022 (or whichev­er ver­sion you are using) — plug-ins. Ready!

Launch Pho­to­shop. The installed plug-in will appear at the very bot­tom of the drop-down menu Fil­ter / Fil­ter / Illus­tra­tion and pho­to: Eliza­ve­ta Chechevit­sa, Fotosklad.Expert

Highpass Sharpen

A use­ful free plu­g­in for a pho­tog­ra­ph­er that improves the sharp­ness of a pho­to. Sharp­en­ing will make the pho­to more detailed and clear, which will visu­al­ly improve its qual­i­ty. This is use­ful for pho­tos in any genre — from land­scapes and macro to fam­i­ly and fash­ion pho­tog­ra­phy.

The plu­g­in is installed in the same way as in the exam­ple above when we talked about the Halftone plu­g­in. If you install both plug-ins, in the Fil­ter / Fil­ter menu they will be locat­ed in the same fold­er — Richard Rosen­man — by the name of their cre­ator / Pho­to and Illus­tra­tion: Eliza­ve­ta Chechevit­sa, Fotosklad.Expert

You can down­load the free plu­g­in for sharp­en­ing here.

For a neat and beau­ti­ful sharp­en­ing, it is enough to adjust only the Radius slid­er (the small­er it is, the more accu­rate) and Inten­si­ty (impact strength). The default is Over­lay Mode, but if you switch to Hard Light Mode, the sharp­ness will rise more notice­ably and rough­ly / Illus­tra­tion and pho­to: Eliza­ve­ta Chechevit­sa, Fotosklad.Expert

Free Photoshop Presets by ON1

The site has a whole group of plu­g­ins for pho­tog­ra­phers with ton­ing, quick retouch­ing, noise reduc­tion. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, you can only get a 14-day tri­al ver­sion of each prod­uct for free. But there you can down­load a set of 80 pre­sets for Adobe Cam­era Raw, the offi­cial plug-in for Pho­to­shop, for free.

The pre­set is in some way the “lit­tle broth­er” of the plu­g­in. This is a small file that con­tains cer­tain bright­ness and col­or set­tings. That is, it, like the plu­g­in, allows you to quick­ly change and tone a pho­to.

The set from ON1 has pre­sets that turn the image into black and white, increase sat­u­ra­tion, tint it in dif­fer­ent col­ors and antique, show shad­ows, etc.

You can down­load free pre­sets for Pho­to­shop here.

How to install a set of presets for Photoshop

First way

1. Go to the site and click the but­ton down­load.

2. You will be asked to fill out a short form. In it you need to spec­i­fy your email, coun­try and indi­cate whether you want to try their free Raw con­ver­sion pro­gram (of course, you can refuse).

3. After that, the onOne_Software_Perfect_Presets_for_Adobe_Camera_Raw archive will appear in your down­load fold­er on your com­put­er.

After you unzip it, you will see two fold­ers — one with free pre­sets for Mac and the oth­er for Win­dows / Illus­tra­tion: Eliza­ve­ta Lentchevicha, Photosklad.Expert

4. Copy all the pre­sets in the fold­er and place them:

• for Win­dows: C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Camera Raw\Settings

• for Mac: Library\Application Support\Adobe\Camera Raw\Settings

If it was not pos­si­ble to install the pro­posed method, we sug­gest using the alter­na­tive described below.

Second way

1. Launch Pho­to­shop, open any image and go to the Adobe Cam­era RAW plu­g­in. It’s on the menu Fil­ter / Fil­ter — Cam­era Raw Fil­ter.

2. In the pan­el on the left, find the tab Pre­sets / Pre­sets.

In the Pre­sets tab, click on the three dots and select the line Import Pro­files and Pre­sets / Import Pro­files & Pre­sets / Illus­tra­tion: Eliz­a­beth Lentchevicha, Photostore.Expert

3. Find the down­loaded archive with pre­sets and select it with­out unpack­ing.

4. Pre­sets will be loaded into the tab User Pre­sets / User Pre­sets.

5. Done! Now, to apply pre­sets, just select them from the list and imme­di­ate­ly see how they affect the image.

Adobe Camera Raw

Adobe Cam­era Raw is an offi­cial and free plu­g­in from Adobe for Pho­to­shop. Ini­tial­ly, it is used to con­vert images in Raw for­mat, but it can also work with jpeg.

Here is a par­tial list of what the plu­g­in is capa­ble of:

• edit bright­ness;
• change White Bal­ance;
• adjust sat­u­ra­tion;
• con­vert to b/w;
• raise sharp­ness;
• remove noise;
• cor­rect per­spec­tive;
• remove chro­mat­ic aber­ra­tions;
• ton­ing;
• recol­or, change the bright­ness and sat­u­ra­tion of indi­vid­ual col­ors.

Read about the effects that can be done with Cam­era Raw and the plug­in’s capa­bil­i­ties in our mate­r­i­al.

Typ­i­cal­ly, Adobe Cam­era Raw is pro­vid­ed by default and installed with Pho­to­shop. But some­times it is not includ­ed. In addi­tion, Adobe reg­u­lar­ly updates and upgrades the plug-in and, in order not to rein­stall the entire pro­gram, you just need to down­load it sep­a­rate­ly.

The lat­est cur­rent and ear­li­er ver­sions of the plu­g­in can be down­loaded from the offi­cial Adobe web­site.