A-Z of Free Photoshop Plugins and Filters
The Photoshop community is choc-full of many free resources, tutorials, tips and techniques, .psd files and even Actions. There is one area that it sadly lacks in, and that is free plugins and filters. Of course, Photoshop has been the pioneer in graphic editor development for a long time now, and with each new version (its current version is CS4) has added an endless supply of features and addons, and as a result, perhaps the need for free plugins or filters is no longer required. Or has it been ignored?
Traditionally plugins are an amateur photographer’s best friend, take your shots, fire up Photoshop, apply some well preset filters, and hey presto you have a reasonably professional image. Professional photographers have been known to use plugins as a base and then tweak and add effects to achieve there own personal professional touch. Plugins are basically an indispensable tool that do not recieve the attention they deserve. And that brings us back to our original mystery, why are there so few free plugins and filters? Do you know the answer? I don’t.
In this A-Z of free Photoshop plugins and filters you will find a few plugins that are (almost) as old as time itself, do not fear, they will work perfectly on all versions of Photoshop and the effect they produce are just as useful now as they were then. If you are looking for a simple and easy method to add effects to an image, this is the post for you.
A-Z of Free Photoshop Plugins & Filters
3D Shadow
This handy plugin 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 many more.
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AAA Buzzer
AAA Buzzer simplifies your image while retaining sharp edges, with low ratio settings in works fairly quickly, it does work slower at a higher ratio, but it also removes more detail.
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Absolute Color
Absolute Color is based on a hue wheel subdivided into 6 sectors of 60 degrees. Choose a slector color segment and it will restrict the tints of the image for that color.
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B/W Conversion
This is a black and white conversion plugin with a difference. It allows you to take total control over the tonal response of Red, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue and Magenta, and the intermediate hues. The user can boost each colors tonal response all the way up to white or limit it down to black, without affecting the other colors at all .
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Bad Dream
Bad Dream gives the kind of color-casts that you would normally spend hours trying to correct; it also gives a soft, misty effect, and the final result can be quite pleasing on the right kind of image.
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Bas-Relief
This filter transforms an image to appear as though it is carved in bas-relief, giving it a lighting effects to accent the surface variations. It can look like aluminum foil, hammered metal, or carved stone, it can also be used to convert a photo into a pencil sketch.
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Camouflage
Use the Camouflage plug-in to make army, fashion and animal camo. The Camouflage plug-in creates seamless images, this means you can use them as texturesand patterns for 3D models or as a background for web sites, they can even be used as a pattern for clothing.
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Caravaggio
This plugin creates a simple ‘oil-painting’ effect, with just four sliders to adjust the image, choose from Creativity, Exuberance, Attentiveness and Moodswing
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Chalkaholic
Chalkaholic renders chalk and charcoal type effects with artistic style and flair. It creates a uniquely effective artistic rendering options, it is an essential addition to any digital artist’s effects collection.
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Circle to Square
With this plugin you can convert any circle into a square.
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Cloud 2.2
This plugin creates seamless life like clouds on any image. You can control the blur, contour and light color.
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Color MegaMix
Color MegaMix modifies the colors of any image, it is based on two rows of colors: 8 source colors and 8 target colors. Taking into account this data, the plugin reconstructs completely the color space of the image.
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Color Replacer
This filter performs color replacement functions. The function is similar to Photoshop’s Replace Color command, however, this plugin is more flexible since you can select the source and target colors independently. Therefore, it is possible to tint gray areas with an arbitrary color, which can be useful for recovering the color in overexposed areas.
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ColorWorks
This plugin comes packaged with 20 effects for modifying image color values in many different ways. You can use them for subtle correction of your digital photos or experiment with the more dramatic transformations that are available. The effects are quite basic, but they can be handy for use on a regular basis.
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Contrast Balance
Contrast Balance enhances the traditional filter luminosity/contrast and breaks it down into four balances of constant/contrast, using the following four oppositions: white-black, red-cyan, green-magenta, blue-yellow.
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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 blured (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.
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Craquelure 3D
This filter creates a wide range of well known craquelure (krăkloor´) effects, that is useful in designing various abstract patterns, decorative surfaces and construction materials.
Two independent craquelure layers can be controlled to achieve an amazing variety of texture effects, from etched metal and silk plaster to melted glass and water ripples.
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Curves Plugin
The Curves plugin can create eight predetermined, interesting curves within your image. The plugins interface shows several thumbnails of the curves, select the one you like and then be impressed by the impact it will have on your image.
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DepthDither
DepthDither uses 3 ways to make the image seems to be continuous when the color is below 24 bit. Just like Photoshop, it provides diffusion, pattern and noise as the dither modes. You can choose the destination color depth, such as 2 bit, 4 bit, 12 bit, 15 bit, 16 bit, 18 bit, this is the main difference from Photoshop, the latter only provides less than 256 colors mode.
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Digitization
The Digitization plug-in has been designed to digitize positions of features in large image files. By clicking on these features their coordinates are saved to a textfile (CSV). The coordinates can then be used for further analysis. The image below shows an example of an analysis based on the data from the Digitization plug-in.
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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.
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Edges Fx
This plugin take advantage of an edge detection algorithm (precise) to obtain the following artistic effects : Colorize, Erode/Dilate, Sat Boost and Sketch.
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EdgeWorks
This plugin comes with 20 effects for creating dramatic edge and color 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.
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EmbossWorks
This plugin can be used 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.
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Equalizer
This plugin offers three methods of equalization, with several options to make this process editable. The process takes advantage of the histogram of frequencies.
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Eraser Classic
Eraser classic makes it easier to replace any color you choose from your image. Activate the eyedropper, select the color directly in the preview window, and adjust tolerance .
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Face Control
Face Control plug-in allows you to change the facial expressions of people in the digital photos.
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Fine Threshold
Unlike the traditional threshold command of Photoshop, Fine Threshold allows you to get quickly, anti-aliased and sharp shapes.
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Flat Median
The Flat Median plugin is a little bit more useful than the “regular” median filter. You have added controls over the level of Flatness, it is “isotropic” just like the gaussian blur and you can apply the effect either horizontally or vertically.
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Fur Plugin
This plugin spreads a simple figure (line or circle with configurable dimensions/thickness) over the whole image. Each image can be filled using two methods: Solid, the figure is filled with a single color (determined by the figure’s center) and 180 deg, were the image source content is kept, but with 180 degree rotation.
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Fuzzifier
The Fuzzifier is a filter that produces diffusion, but preserve details. There are three sliders, designated ‘Spread’, ‘Strength’ and ‘Fuzziness’. At high ‘Spread’ settings, the effect becomes grain-like, so keep this slider at the low end unless that’s what you’re trying for. Strength, of course, controls the overall strength of the effect, while ‘Fuzziness’ controls the effectiveness with which detail is preserved.
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Gradient Blur
This plugin applies a gradient blur that draw the attention to the photograph’s main subject. There are sliders to control the position where the blur starts and it’s strength.
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Gradient Smithy
Gradient Smithy allows you to create what Photoshop calls the gradient map effect. Gradient Smithy allows to create complex gradients, quite easily.
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Grain Natural 2
Grain Natural creates a grain-a-like effect of your images. This plugin takes advantage of the colors already present in the image to achieve a natural result.
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Harmonix
Harmonix renders a single, horizontal line on an image, but this is no ordinary line, it is the result of superimposing up to ten separate harmonic frequencies, scaled to the screen. You can use it to create realistic graphs or demonstrate how to create other basic waveforms from nothing but carefully selected harmonic frequencies.
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Harry’s Filters
The famous “Harry’s Filters” is a series of filters that contains up to 69 different image effects. The main effect categories are called Color, Artistic, Gradients, Patterns, Warp, Noise, En/Decrypt, Other and Nature. It also includes filters for changing the image color or mood, for creating artistic effects, producing colorful gradients or impressive patterns, warping images and adding special noise effects to image. Additionally they let you encrypt and decrypt images with 64 bit keys, produce zoom, mirror or paint effects as well as natural effects like lightning, tornado and polar lights.
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High Pass Sharpening
This is a plugin to sharpen photos with the classic high pass method. The user can adjust the high pass filter radius, and control the blending with the original image.
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HSL Plus
HSL Plus is similar to the traditional hue/saturation/luminosity balance, but with some extras. It has a better color integrity, improved control over luminosity, and you also have the option of making an automatic contrast (due to the Auto button) then of re-adjusting.
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ICO Windows Icon
This plugin gives you an easy method for creating your web site’s favourites/shortcut/bookmark icon in Photoshop.
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Illustrator
This simple plugin creates an effect similar to a colored-ink illustration.
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Jama 3d
Jama 3D is one of the simplest ways to create corrugated style and cellular like patterns from 2D images. You can easily make various bricks and herring bone textures.
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Julia World
Julia ‘s curves are a family of mathematical curves (fractals) renowned for their beauties. This plugin is very easy to use, all you have to do to find a curve and simply click the Random button, thats it. It also allows endless zooming to help you easily customize colors.
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Kaleidoscope 2.1
Kaleidoscope 2.1 is a plugin which uses multiple symmetries to create beautiful patterns, it uses these three spinning effects: Mirror, Copy, Transition and Blend.
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Lattice Composer
Lattice Composer effectively designs grids and nettings, it can produce a variety of weave patterns, fabric textures, body art tattoos and skeleton simulations. The 3D text effects can be extraordinary.
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Lens Correction
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 .
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Local Contrast Enhancement
This plugin’s main purpose is to enhance the detail of an image. This is achieved 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 contrast that is increased, the size of the local area and the amount of blending with the original photo.
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Local Equalization
From an artistic point of view, local equalization can be used if you wish to enhance the aspect of a given texture. It can also be used to analyze and optimize an image certain details are barely viewable.
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Luce
Luce blends radial or directional light beams into your image. There is a text box for adjusting the intensity of the effect.
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Magic Enhancer Lite
With Magic Enhancer you can essentially improve your photos by adjusting its lightness, contrast and color balance It is perfect for enhancement image and photos which lack lightness or uneven illumination, silhouetted images on dark backgrounds. Convenient color temperature control allows fixing color balance defects easily.
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MasterBlaster
A single Photoshop-compatible plug-in with 20 effects for “blasting” intense color into your images. Ideal for when you need to add dramatic impact to your photos or work.
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Melt 1.1
With this plugin, you can alter an image, using an effective wave style. Size, intensity, and aspect ratio of waves can be customized.
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Mezzy
The Mezzy plug-in comes packaged with 15 effects for creating a selection of simple grain and mezzo styles, it gives your photos a new look with these various effects. (No MAC version).
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Mistifier
The Mistifier recreates the hazy, soft-focus effect beloved of traditional SLR photographers. This is ideal for portraits, but can also be used to great effect on landscapes, giving a sort of dreamy quality.
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Mosaic
Mosaic makes your photos look as if they were created out of a mosaic tile. Photo-realistic depth and variable tile size and color options give this effect an infinite number of looks.
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NightScope
The Nightscope is a filter for adding a basic “night-vision” effect to your digital photographs and/or 2D and 3D computer-generated images.
It first removes all color from the picture and gives a very slight blur to indicate the camera is trying hard to focus in a low-light situation. Then you can choose to add grain either keeping it B&W or mixing separate red, green and blue channels to vary the effect.
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NightVision
The NightVision plug-in can make any image look like the ones from night-vision goggles. By using the effects in this plug-in, you can make images look like they are from a black & white security cameras or CCTV, it’s also possible to make them look like infra-red photos, or you can just use the interlace to make an image look like a TV picture.
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Nostalgia
The plugin selectively desaturates your image, but also gives a subtle change in hues. The end result is that some parts of the image become monochrome, while others take on a an unrealistic-looking coloration.
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Ornament
This a great free plugin, from Flaming Pear, it creates a quick-and-dirty 360° panoramic photograph with no strange lenses or image stitching needed.
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Panorama Tools
Panorama Tools is a free program which can be used to generate, edit and transform many kinds of panoramic images. It comes packaged with an added plugin called Realtime Panorama Editor (only Photoshop/Gimp version), which makes the Photoshop window an editable VR-viewer. You can pan left and right, tilt up and down, and zoom in and out. At any time you can use all the Photoshop tools to edit the image and instantly apply the changes to the warped panoramic image while keeping the interactive window open.
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Pastellise
Give your images a pastel effect with this simple plugin.
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Perspective Transformations
Sometimes it is hard choose the optimum angle to take a picture. If the object is essentially planar (e.g. a painting on a wall) or the angle is not off by much then there is hope that you can correct the perspective afterwards. The opposite may also be of interest if you want to make a composition and place objects at different angles, e.g. pep up screenshots for a brochure.
The Perspective plugin lets you carry out both active (“Modify” ) and passive (“Rectify” ) transformations. You can rotate the image around three axes, then reposition and resize it. Grid lines can be displayed both before and after transformation.
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Photo Tinter
“AS Photo tinter” is an image editing plug-in filter for extracting tone profile from toned black and white photos and applying extracted profiles to another photo. It is not yet another sepia effect – you may apply different tints to different areas of the photo, based on source brightness.
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Pinocchio
Pinocchio is mainly a fun tool to produce image distortions by mouse strokes. You can use it for caricatures and such. Just click on the preview image and drag in whichever direction, then use the sliders for fine tuning. This version lets you perform multiple mouse strokes without having to exit and reopen the plugin.
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Pole Transform 2.1
This plugin gives any image that cool Polar Panorama effect, aka “wee planets” .
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Posterizer
Posterizer is a plugin that gives you the option to posterize the luminosity and the hue of any image.
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Projection
This plugin gives you a collection of interactive perspective effects: the ability to tile an image into infinite space (copy or mirror mode), or to repeat all the edges The 3D effect can be achieved simply by moving the corners of the image (in the preview window).
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RedEyes
The RedEYes plugin removes the red eye effect often caused by a flash camera. It employs an easy-to-use semi-automatic algorithm that quickly and economically eliminates the problem.
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Retrodots
Retrodots is a simple plugin that generates dot grids which can be based on selections.
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ScreenWorks
The ScreenWorks plugin has 30 options for creating screen/mesh patterns. This 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. (No MAC version).
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Seamless Border
With this plugin you can create a seamless border from any image. There are three modes: Compact overlaps borders of two tiles, and blends them in a linear way; Advantage: usually, creates the best continuity between tiles; Disadvantage: the size of the last tile may vary with the “Border Size” setting, and you will have to crop the result manually; Stretch: Unlike “Compact Mode” , tiles are first extended by stretching the borders; Mirror: Unlike “Compact Mode” , tiles are first extended by using symmetries.
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Seamless Workshop
Seamless Workshop creates a seamless tile from any image. You can also create a “surrealistic modification” of a picture, as in the image below. It is a powerful tool for texture creators, and a helpful toy for graphic designers. The unique ‘Seamless Blur’ effect can be useful for any available tileable pattern.
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Select Edges
The Select Edges plugin is a powerful tool for selective processing. You can select edge detail in your image for sharpening with Unsharp Mask without getting halos or switch to the inverse selection and use Gaussian Blur to diminish the background.
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Selective Saturation
This plugn, Selective Saturation, lets the user define a Saturation Zone by setting it’s center and range with two sliders. A mask preview mode is available to fine tune the settings.
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Serious Fog
This plugin gives your image a fog-like effect. Using the ‘Severity’ slider controls the thickness of the fog, and the ‘Whiteout’ slider lets you suggest that maybe the sun will burn off the fog later in the day. Simple, yet effective.
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Smart Refinement
This plug-in enhances sharpness, depth-of-field (DOF) and noise (dust) reduction.
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Snowflakes
With the Snowflakes plug-in, you can make it snow any time of the year, anywhere you want. You can control all aspects of a snow, adjust the size of the snowflakes, choose soft snowflakes or hail, the quantity and density of falling snowflakes and even the color of the flakes.
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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 blured image.
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Soft Vignette
Vignette effects, where the edges of the image shade off gradually, are always a popular feature required by photographers. This plugin is feature heavy, you can adjust the gradient shape, sharpness, invert the gradient, select from 14 preset effects, choose a pattern, select the effect strenghth and, of course, you can adjust the height and width.
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Sorting Tiles
Fundamentally, this filter cuts an image into several blocks, sorts out the colors, redistributes and creates a complicated pattern.
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Stereogram Lab Filter
The Stereogram Lab Filter generates hidden image stereograms within Photoshop.
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SwapShop
A single plugin with 15 effects for switching the color values in your images. Useful for experimenting with interesting combinations and creating surreal results. Windows only.
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Techni-X
A plug-in filter for very high contrast B&W effects which are ideal for certain illustration work. It bleaches out most of the mid-tone greys, leaving crisp dark blacks and bright clean whites. It will produce clear B&W images with limited tones which are suitable for cheap reproduction via the office photocopier or when published in newsprint.
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Thredgeholder
The Thredgeholder plugin provides an edge detection that’s simple to use but highly effective, just have a look at the screenshot below.
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Tone 1.0
This plugin can convert any image into an anti-alias tone pattern, similar to newspaper tones.
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Vibrations 1.1
This plugin has two different methods (“Levels” and “Lines” ) for creating a streak effect of your images . The filter has an inbuilt blur, in order to ensure smoothness.
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Water Ripples
The highly realistic water ripples effect designer has numerous options as well as an impressive 3D quality. The random settings generator produces unlimited variations of rippled surfaces.
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Weaver
This plugin creates a weave effect of your images.
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Xpose
Xpose is an exposure adjustment plugin, it is a quick adjustment tool that for highlights and shadows. With just a few sliders you can achieve better exposure of your digital photos.
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Plugin Development Resources
Filter Foundry Plugin
The Filter Factory is a free plug-in that has been developed to allow users to create their own filters and effects using an internal programming language (which resembles C) and compile them as separate plug-in files.
Filter Meister
This is another free plugin that allows users to create there own plugins. This plugin offers extensive documentation, step-by-step tutorials and free downloadable samples. This type of plugin is perfect for anyone with limited knowledge of any script language.
Photoshop CS4 SDK
If you are feeling really adventurous, you could develop a plugin using the Photoshop SDK. Previously you would have to pay just shy of $200 for the SDK, it is now free, the only thing you have to do is register with Adobe.
Photoshop Scripting
A script is a series of commands that tells Photoshop to perform one or more tasks, Photoshop CS4 supports scripts written in AppleScript, JavaScript or VBScript. Download the latest documentation on scripting here: Photoshop Scripting Documentation.
max
August 3rd, 2009 5:43 pmsome of these are horrific, why even leave those in?
Bruce
August 3rd, 2009 5:43 pmyeah these were kinda aweful
Christopher Anderton
August 3rd, 2009 5:47 pmGot everything i want with comercial plugs.
This post should be renamed A-Z Free Photoshop Plugins and filters for Windows” anyway.
Cheers
Tifa
August 3rd, 2009 6:06 pmDo I really need to click through them all to find out if any of them are for mac?
yashfeen
November 9th, 2010 6:34 pmhi Tifa i like u. +923158523698
David
August 3rd, 2009 6:28 pmThe color replacer doesn’t seem to work with CS3. Crashes every time. Has anybody else given it a try yet?
Therapix
August 3rd, 2009 6:36 pmAwesome selection :)
grimdeath
August 3rd, 2009 6:38 pmI love this site and most all the articles but this is a TERRIBLE post! I worked for 5 years in a professional photography studio and I can tell you nearly every one of these effects can be created in vanilla Photoshop and probably do it MUCH better! Here I will break down a few (and these dont even require CS4)
Black and White (avoid desaturate for photos!):
-Method 1: Image > Adjustments > Channel Mixer. Use the drop down presets or enter your own values and click “monochrome”. I typically use 15,95,-4.
-Method 2: Image > Adjustments > Black and White tool. No need for explination, it has presets or customizable sliders and works great. This only came in in recent CS versions though.
(you can also create layer effects using these tools with the “adjustment layers” button at the bottom of the layers window)
Curves Plugin:
-Why not use the default Curves tools thats been built in since…well like forever! You access it the same place as the black and white tools above.
Dreamy Photo (or any Soft Focus effect really):
-Open a photo and duplicate its layer. Go to filter > Gausian Blur and blur it, you should still see basic shapes but it should be really blurry. Change the blurry layers opacity down to around 50% until you like the softness. For added effect duplicate the blurry layer and set it to soft light blending mode (top of the layers window) lower the opacity of it a bit more.
Gradient Blur
-Please, for all that is holy, learn how to use Masks (both quick and layer masks)! They are one of the single most important part of photoshop, period. This will you on nearly every photo effect, not just blurs.
Mezzy
-Try the adjustment effect called Threshhold, great for that Sin City comic type effect. You can further customize it with the use of contract and other adjustment layers and techniques.
Perspective Transform
-Since CS2 or 3 there has been a filter called Vanishing Point that can do these types of effects. Its a bit more complicated but simple enough to understand looking at adobes video tutorials…perhaps there is some on youtube as well!
Red Eye
There is a built in tool in photoshop cs3 and later (maybe cs2 even?) Look under the healing tool/patch set. In pre-cs3 versions before the tool was introduced you can fix most red eye using a regular brush sized down to the size of pupil, change the blending mode (just under the menu bar while the brush is selected) to color mode and changing your brush color to black. Brush directly on the red and it should convert to black (really black and white). You can use the burn tool at a lower opacity to darken if it looks too grey.
That should be enough to give you a good idea! My point here is that in the time it would take you to download and learn to install most of these you could have a better understanding of the core photoshop abilities and tools and be better for it in the long run!
Lisa Fowler
March 13th, 2010 10:38 amhello..just wondered if anyone can offer any advice..free sites…to get started in photo editing ……I already know and use the basics, but needing to upgrade for example: remove hair in face….enhance portraits of people….etc.? I do have PS on my pc but not familiar with yet..seems rather confusing and need something faitly quick? Any suggestions or other sites you can introduce me too…Appreciate any advice and help!
Jeff O'Hara
August 3rd, 2009 6:42 pmThese were bad, I’m embarrassed for this post.
Bo Pentecost
August 3rd, 2009 7:08 pmI am sorry that I have to agree with the negative feedback on this one…
superbad
August 3rd, 2009 7:19 pmit would be better if smashing suspend this post..this is the worst post ever.. plugins are for lazy people.
superbad
August 3rd, 2009 7:20 pm…waiting to delete
Debashish Paul
August 3rd, 2009 7:32 pmI didn’t like this post either. Very ugly set of plugins. I didn’t feel I was watching something on smashing. There is no mention about the best plugins in the business and awful plugins are published. Please delete this SM…
Fahai Media
August 3rd, 2009 7:54 pmI rarely comment on SM. It mostly provides great articles, but sometimes something comes below average and users start commenting on it. This post should be deleted immediately to maintain the standard of SM. @ Grimdeath I totally agree with you. Most of the plugins are useless and those effects can be achieved with PS. This never ending plugins list gives a feeling that PS is useless application which even cant handle basic actions. I am not against plugins, I love them but only when something is not achievable within the application. No offense, SM gurus posted something beloooooooow average.
Eneza
August 3rd, 2009 8:02 pmWhy BILL GATES? Great LIST though!
charlie
August 3rd, 2009 8:21 pmOne word……Lame!
ryster amigo
August 3rd, 2009 8:37 pmi see some of the blogs listed above and i enjoy reviewing on it… we will come back often…see yahhh..thanks for the information share…
Thanks and regards,
Federico
August 3rd, 2009 8:40 pmWow… looks like next post should be titled “UI Design for Photoshop Plugin developers”!
moddalsatti
August 3rd, 2009 8:52 pmStop whining about this post. I think most of us here are NOT appreciative of free stuff SM gives away. Once in a while, a post comes a little ‘off’. But, that is because there are newbies among you visitors. If you wanna stand out making a smart ass comment. STFU and keep it to yourself or start writing your own blog…if you are an expert.
Keep up the good work SM. We love you regardless and we appreciate all the information that flows thru your website. Keep ‘em coming.
lx
August 3rd, 2009 9:02 pm…Looks like I won’t be using free filters after all. Allthough the last one, if it could be batched, it would be nice for a quick gallery, or to prepare your images for your blog in a quick and easy way.
Ömer UZUN
August 3rd, 2009 9:32 pmFantastic! Thank you.
yoxx
August 3rd, 2009 9:35 pmi like it…
Retheesh
August 3rd, 2009 9:37 pmReally worst set of plugins…. smash magazine really disappointed us, how can you name it as A-Z plugins..??? really sorry to say like this….
Eric
August 3rd, 2009 10:43 pmWow..are these filters from 1995? They look like they are made for the people who steal Photoshop and think they know how to use the program because they can apply a filter to an image.
Good idea on the post, but try limiting it down to a few quality free filters and not a bunch of lame ones.
begs
August 3rd, 2009 10:48 pmKaleidoscope 2.1 doesn’t work for me. I got PS CS3 and put it into the plugins/filters directory.
Anyway: Nice list!
@Eric: I’m looking forward to your high quality free PS plugins list. Where can i find it?
Mike
August 3rd, 2009 10:50 pmThat was like a time travel back to 1995
MoonBoy
August 3rd, 2009 11:01 pmEraser Classic
That’s all what I like here.
Thanks and waiting better articles. you are the best SM.
WilhelmR
August 3rd, 2009 11:14 pmNever understood the tacky textured dialogues of free plugins.. but there’s something nostalgic about them :)
Not the best list ever, but you don’t have to stop in the final effect of some of these plugins. Combining them (in more subtle ways) with other layers in your file can give you a nice effect. As with everything, you need to know how to use them, the plugin alone won’t turn your webcam photo into a work of art!
Maybe next time, whoever writes the article can try the plugin first and create a nicer preview. That means, no bill gates plates ;)
mathiz
August 3rd, 2009 11:17 pmI really don’t like plugins. they never give me ant quality.
I just make it myself, tricks and plugin won’t do!
KiL
August 3rd, 2009 11:18 pm{flamebait}
Well these are filters for Windows, so clearly not aimed at professional Photoshop users ;-P
{/flamebait}
No really for smashing magazine this article was pretty godawful.
Jorix
August 3rd, 2009 11:30 pmThanks for the list, a timesaver, now I know which 50 plug-ins to avoid. I must agree with most other comments, this article is a bit disappointing coming from Smashing Magazine. I rather would have less but better quality articles.
Khesselink
August 3rd, 2009 11:39 pmIndeed, this post is kinda sad… if this blog has been build for professionals, then you guys would know that a professional would not use these kind of plugins, because he is able to produce these kind of effects with the build in tools in photoshop..
Maxime
August 3rd, 2009 11:48 pmyeah delete!!!
Maxime
August 3rd, 2009 11:49 pmthis is a good Dutch topic about good plugins for photoshop: http://smokingcow.com/2009/07/29/5-creatieve-fotografische-photoshop-plugins/
mad
August 3rd, 2009 11:49 pmI have to agree: this post is not very useful. Especially as most of the people are professionals and really like to WIDEN their horizons. If this article made it online because you need continuity … please forget about it. It’s better to wait one more day and get a good article than to read an article that would not even fit the needs of dilettantes.
But: the approach of grimdeath was quite good! (see post #7)
user
August 3rd, 2009 11:56 pmdid’t expect these poor stuff in smashing magazine
Nicola
August 4th, 2009 12:00 amnot impressed, looks like a collection from 1992…. I used to love coming to this website and reading the articles and seeing the great resources, but this is taking the mickey, I understand these are free, but really, where did you find these?
Jens
August 4th, 2009 12:06 amWorst Smashing Magazine ever!
Open questions for all Plugins ….
– Costs?
– System? (Mac Windows)
– Clear benefits?
– Problems?
.. btw. most of the Plugins are really shitty!
There are a lot of pro Plugins out there and
I can’t see at least one of theme in there …
Really, this is a fucking bad article for this topic.
Sorry.
Greez Jens
soully
August 4th, 2009 12:06 amhmmmm, well at least the ico plugin is useful…
Twice
August 4th, 2009 12:07 amSome of those screenshots were eye hurting. :(
Check this out:
http://media2.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/images/photoshop-filters-plugins/psplugin67.jpg
m2
August 4th, 2009 12:09 amThat is Nothing, who are better storys
yos
August 4th, 2009 12:10 amhorrible! nightmare!
^_^
August 4th, 2009 12:14 amhehe, this article is a good joke
emmanuel
August 4th, 2009 12:15 amSoooooo ’95!
Niall McKenna
August 4th, 2009 12:41 amif i ever have to use the camouflage tool I may have to kill myself!
Gustavo Lemos
August 4th, 2009 12:43 amI can’t understand how someone allow to post this in SM…
steve
August 4th, 2009 12:51 amnormally smashing mag is cool & witty.
that one sucks!!!
Aaron
August 4th, 2009 12:53 amI think some of the commenters to this article are overreacting. Not all of the plugins are something I would need, but some are usefull. Cheers folks.
Morten Zetlitz
August 4th, 2009 1:51 amI am very sorry to say that I agree with the others on the negative comments.
However, Smashing is so good at giving us great posts which saves the day over and over again. So not everything can be 100%.
I guess it is the ugly interfaces that puts people off. That and that most plugins is actually doing what vanilla PS can do, if you have the skills.
Marc-André Ménard
August 4th, 2009 2:08 amAre we back in the ’80 ?, where Goo was cool and photoshop was 1.0
My god, how can you make a list of such bad plugin like these !
At least, most of them (the worst) is PC only, wich is a good thing, it won’t contaminate the Mac (mostly like viruse). If you wanna ruin your picture, here is the solution.
Meh
August 4th, 2009 2:11 amSome of these are SERIOUSLY naff.
Rob
August 4th, 2009 2:12 amSmashing, this post has got to go. If I were a first time visitor, I’d think this was just another amateur tutorial site.
Berk Gün
August 4th, 2009 2:22 amKill me now! best plugins ever… believe me :P
Andrew
August 4th, 2009 2:23 amThis is the most rubbish post i have ever seen. Why bother….. Can you send this post to the internet grave yard.
Webdesigner
August 4th, 2009 2:45 amHm… some are nice, some are worthless or I don’t get the point why I should use them….
ronihind
August 4th, 2009 2:46 amDid someone actually get paid to write this?
Phil Tebbit
August 4th, 2009 2:52 amThis post made me laugh out loud.
Is it supposed to be a parody of a Smashing Magazine post?!
Leonard
August 4th, 2009 2:57 amI agree with everyone, this post was rubbish. And its more of an A-X…. There isn’t a Y or Z. Rubbish! It doesn’t even review the plugins in anyway. I really hope you didn’t pay someone for this, and if you did I really hope it didn’t pay anywhere as near as much as the good articles you post.
I’d rather read nothing then read rubbish.
Rx
August 4th, 2009 3:59 amFirst of all, this article sould be titled “A-Z of Free Photoshop Plugins and Filters FOR WINDOWS”. It will be lees misleading.
Second, those plug ins are terrible. How can you use that, when you can do the same with photoshop itself? OK, you could if only you had read the manual…
Third, try to read the Kai Krause power tips and tricks on Photoshop (they’re available here and there on the net). They’re old ones, but at least they can present some interest.
i’m sorry to write that, but this article is irrelevant. And for the first time, an article of Smashing Magazine disappoints me.
Rusty
August 4th, 2009 4:45 amI have only been using Photoshop for a while myself and I have already learnt some of the things you can achieve with it, without using any of these plugins.
For those that would rather use a plugin and don’t know how to achieve the effects – I’d say this is a good list of free plugins.
However, I’m with everyone else here when they say this is no benefit to the most of us.
I looked through the whole list and would never use any of them…I feel i wasted my time reading this article.
Sorry.
Still – keep up the good work Smashing
Dré
August 4th, 2009 4:46 amhmm… hope this is a joke :)
Or it’s a repost of 1990..
Chris
August 4th, 2009 4:46 amneed I add anything…?
Meh
August 4th, 2009 4:54 amTo be honest I often feal the quality of smashing magazine articles isn’t that great, so im surprised to see such confusion over this article.
I mean this one IS really bad, but they’re rarely that insightful (sometimes useful though). If you’re after a serious web design/development blog there are plenty out there; but smashing is great for one thing … quantity. I’ve always kind of seen smashing as an amateurs resource that I like to dip into occasionally to find a couple of new free fonts or the odd CSS tip. It’s just not set up in a way that cultivates high quality, like alistapart or simialr.
Danny
August 4th, 2009 5:17 amUnfortunatley I´m gonna have to agree with the majority, that was well below the standard I´ve come to expect from smashing, especially considering that it was a specyboy production. While I´d admit that 3 people might find it usefull, I´d suggest an A-Z or top 100 of photoshop ACTIONS, which are way cooler and infinitely more usefull.
Well you certainly can´t win em all. Chins up lads, the next one had better smash, cos this one just tinkled.
ME
August 4th, 2009 5:43 amThis could have been a very valuable post, but yikes, I got to the H’s and stopped, too terrible to continue. If you use these effects, you’ll automatically look like an amateur. Maybe that’s who this is targeting?
Michaël
August 4th, 2009 5:46 am@Meh (#60) : I totally agree with you.
j
August 4th, 2009 5:55 amwow…
Edgar Valdés
August 4th, 2009 6:24 amIt would be a better idea to post “The Best Comercial Plugins for Photoshop”…. this ones are really bad. Where is the “smash”?
Amerigo
August 4th, 2009 6:58 amTerrible post, Sorry
Courtny Cotten
August 4th, 2009 7:23 amThis post is rockin’
Katie
August 4th, 2009 7:29 amYikes. I read SM daily, but sorry, these plugins are just awful. The post would work if you just renamed it “A-Z Worst Photoshop Plugins on the Net”
Matt
August 4th, 2009 7:40 amHoly shizbut these are crap!
Is this a serious post?
tomqvaxy
August 4th, 2009 7:45 amNone I tried work for Mac. Too bad I’m a designer not someone trying to update their MySpace page. Boo!
Bogus
August 4th, 2009 7:51 amKiL
{flamebait}
Well these are filters for Windows, so clearly not aimed at professional Photoshop users ;-P
{/flamebait}
Putting flamebait tags around your statement doesn’t change the fact tat you have obviously never worked in a professional environment and are thus an amateur. Many pro designers are forced to use PC’s by blue chip IT departments who can’t be bothered to support Macs.
Bret
August 4th, 2009 8:34 amit’s a little too early for an april fool’s joke…
photoshopeater
August 4th, 2009 8:46 amI agree with what seems to be the consensus. 99% of these blow. Was interested in about 4 but then found out all but one are for PC only. LAME. Sorry for whomever spent their time researching all this crap and writing up this post. Sure generated a lot of fun comments to read, though
photoshopeater
August 4th, 2009 8:47 am@Bogus, support your own mac, loser.
me
August 4th, 2009 8:57 amThis isn’t for professional designers. Smashing Magazine should stick to writing articles for people that actually care about design.
Scott Beatty
August 4th, 2009 9:20 amSmashing, please warn Mac users in title of post or first paragraph when you are posting Windows only content.
Designdiva
August 4th, 2009 9:32 amApril Fools!
seriously what are we, in 1980? all of these are horrid and no self-respecting designer would touch them.
Derek Williams
August 4th, 2009 10:09 amThis was a very worthless post. This is a rare miss for Smashing Magazine. The effects that these “filters” produce are annoying and exactly what Photoshop should not be used for.
Jane
August 4th, 2009 10:46 amWow, I’ve stepped into the Twilight Zone.
tomqvaxy
August 4th, 2009 10:52 amI’ve never worked anywhere unprofessional enough about their design standards to force the department to work on PCs aside from some production only places where you would not need this stuff anyway. Maybe I’m lucky, however that does not change the fact that these are largely crap and useless to the industry standard in the 1st place. SM usually does better. Thank-you & goodnight.
Matt Williams
August 4th, 2009 11:08 amTo those who complain, I’d like to say “If you don’t want it, you can’t have any”. You don’t *have* to read this, you know. Just because you feel a post is “beneath” you, doesn’t mean it might not have validity for others. I’m not a mac user, but I don’t complain when there are mac-centric items. It might be nice if there were more for linux, but still, there’s no reason to whine and complain. Finally, to quote “thumper”, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all”.
To SM, thank you for all your wonderful posts and your efforts. Please disregard the complaints and nay-sayers.
Steve Campos
August 4th, 2009 11:24 amhmmm. sooooooooo.
Steve Campos
August 4th, 2009 11:35 amI thought I accidentally clicked on the very first post.
Mike Seaby
August 4th, 2009 12:42 pmI guess they’re free for a reason. I really wanted to find a gem in this list, even in an early 90′s retro kinda way but they’re all hideous abominations…
Thomas Strobl
August 4th, 2009 1:03 pmit must have cost 5000 hours to get this cr*p together. but its still cr*p.
Duncan
August 4th, 2009 1:23 pmAnd to top it off, these are mostly PC plug-ins.
Facundo
August 4th, 2009 1:34 pmFrom Bill Gates to lazy (and cheapper) filters… this is the worst post ever at SM.
Delete it please, don’t insult us! Tks!
Stephen
August 4th, 2009 1:54 pmI just vomited onto my keyboard. The funny thing is… it looks better then ALL of these plug-ins (ha! This article should be titled A-Z Free PhotoShop FUG-INS!)
jonathan Atkinson
August 4th, 2009 1:56 pmI have to agree with most comments – felt like I stepped back 10 years in time….. not your usual high standard unfortunately – but no complaints to the normally excellent articles.
Anyone looking at this stuff to use, just needs to experiment with the core photoshop – you will ALWAYS gain better results and a warm fuzzy feeling just experimenting and doing it yourself.
neo-007
August 4th, 2009 2:31 pmHey ! What’s that ! I have seen much better topic, I am disappointed !I have the impression that this subject dates from 1990..
Neo from France
Jonh G
August 4th, 2009 3:23 pmI must agree with most of the negative comments. I really hope many of the Photoshop newbies out there read the comments first.
Most of those websites were of very poor quality and don’t deserve the traffic from SM.
However, because of all the great info and freebies you’ve posted, you can certainly be allowed an off-post or three. Thanks guys!
Creamy
August 4th, 2009 3:58 pmCreamy don’t like this.
Peter
August 4th, 2009 4:01 pmSeriously, the title should have said “For Windows Only”. What a waste of my time trying to find any that are Mac compatible. There were a few of interest among the horrible ones, but, for Windows only, so I cannot try them.
Randy Bennett
August 4th, 2009 4:10 pmI rarely ever post but I do find this post pretty bad as well… If you can afford a couple g’s for Photoshop, then a couple hundred for a really good commercial plug-in is worth the cost. However, the free ones shown on here are honestly pretty weak in the fact that this would be good for a Photoshop 6, but so many advancements have been done by CS3 and CS4 that make half of these filters obsolete and also the fact that they put so little time into their GUI does them no justice…did they use Microsoft Paint to do their interfaces….don’t they use photoshop as well…. Very disappointed, however the concept of free filters made me click here……but i do regret it now.
Marc-André Ménard
August 4th, 2009 5:01 pmStephen is right on !… I feel the same, (barf!)… 1990 call to have all those ugly plug in back… please send it a.s.a.p… maybe there is some killer article in preparation, and it will blow our mind with good shit, but during this time they just send that shitting stuff to keep us from falling asleep or go on vacantion !… i dont know really !
Chris Afici
August 4th, 2009 5:33 pmWow…… you’d think the world was ending judging by some of the responses. Perspective people. LOL!
Brett
August 4th, 2009 6:24 pm@Marc-Andre Menard – I think you where right about them prepping a killer article for after this one. The article after this one is about implementing HTML 5 and CSS3. Hopefully thats good enough shit for you :) I thought a few of these plugins were alright, the ICO plugin is nice, yet most were awful.
derf
August 4th, 2009 7:07 pmWow lot of Mac Snobs in here
The plugins are still terrible, whether you use a PC or Mac
Owning a mac does not make you a pro guys, it means you can buy an expensive computer no more, no less. Just because a painter buys expensive easels and brushes doesn’t make him or her a professional, you all really ought to get the mice from up your bums.