Do you use Photoshop to edit your photos? There are many free Photoshop plugins that can be downloaded and installed to enhance your experience in Photoshop. Whether you’re looking to automate repetitive tasks or enhance your photo editing and retouching skills, these plugins will help you get the most out of Adobe’s popular image editing software.
If you’ve browsed many lists of free Photoshop plugins, you may have come across many plugins that are outdated and don’t work with the current version of Photoshop. All of the plugins featured here are available through Adobe’s Exchange and up-to-date.
Free Photoshop Plugins for Photographers
Interactive Luminosity Mask
Luminosity masks are used by many photographers to improve and enhance their photos, especially landscapes and nature shots. Unfortunately, the process of using luminosity masks can be tedious and time-consuming.
The Interactive Luminosity Mask plugin is one of the easiest ways to add luminosity masks to your workflow. Compared to Photoshop actions that attempt to accomplish the same thing, Interactive Luminosity Mask provides far more flexibility while also allowing you to see the impact on your photo as you’re working.
With the help of the plugin, you can use luminosity and saturation masks for selections, channels, curves layers, levels layers, and hue/saturation layers. Although it’s powerful, this plugin is also simple to use. If you’re new to luminosity masks, you can watch the tutorial video above and start working with this free plugin right away.
KinemaPhoto-LITE
The KinemaPhoto-LITE plugin for Photoshop makes it easy to create your own cinemagraphs, GIFs, and animations in Photoshop. It uses these features of Photoshop to simplify the process of creating your custom images:
- Trim video (select your clip)
- Create a still image from a video layer (create the still & mask)
- Create video loops (set your loop)
- Export video (finishing touches)
Creating interesting cinemagraphs and GIFs is possible without the plugin, but you’ll find that KinemaPhoto-LITE makes things much easier.
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Watermark for Adobe Photoshop
If you post or share your photos online, you might use a watermark to protect against unauthorized use. There are several different ways to add the watermark, including manually or using a Photoshop action. This free Photoshop plugin for photographers is the easiest option if you need to watermark several photos.
With the help of the plugin, you can quickly add a watermark to a single photo or multiple photos. You won’t save much time if you’re using it for a singe photo, but you’ll save loads of time when adding a watermark to a lot of photos. You’ll have full control over details like the text, font, color, stroke, size, and more. Optionally, you can also use an image, like your logo, instead of text for the watermark.
It’s easy to use and worth adding if you use watermarks.
Conv Free – LRTemplate to XMP Preset Converter
Do you have Lightroom presets in the old .lrtemplate format that you’d like to use in Photoshop’s Camera Raw? This free plugin will automatically convert the files and provide you with .xmp versions of the presets that can be used in Camera Raw. You can also convert presets from .dng to .xmp format.
Converting the presets is as easy as dragging and dropping the files, and selecting the folder where you want to export them.
Action Launcher
Many photographers use a lot of different Photoshop actions. Whether you’re using actions you’ve purchased or downloaded, or whether you’ve created your own actions, things can get complicated and unorganized when you have a lot of actions and sets installed.
The free version of Action Launcher provides an easy way to access your actions quickly whenever you need them. You can filter the installed actions from your collection based on the name of the action set name, text in the action’s name, or sort the results A-Z or Z-A. The plugin remembers your settings even after restarting Photoshop.
Conclusion
If you’ve been looking to improve your photo editing skills and find resources that are easy on your wallet, these tools may be just what you need. Since these are all completely free to use, we encourage you to try out any that interest you and see if they can help make your digital photography workflow more efficient or improve the quality of your images. While some may be better suited for beginners than others, there’s something here for every skill level.
Looking for more? Please see The Best Free Photoshop Plugins for Designers
Lead photo by Pakorn Khantiyaporn.
