5 Essential Photoshop Plugins You Must Have

Adobe Photoshop is an excellent tool for graphics enthusiasts and professionals. It can be used for simple image editing or more complex digital drawings and graphics work, requiring various options, settings, and workflows.

Photoshop comes with support for third-party plugins, which allow you to expand its capabilities. These plugins offer a wide range of features, from filters to integration with stock image services. Not only do these plugins add new functionality, but they can also save you time by simplifying your workflow. If you’re unsure about which plugins to install, we have some recommendations for you.

The Plugins You Need

If you use Photoshop for image editing, download the following plugins:

GuideGuide is a useful plugin for creating guides in your project. While Photoshop has a built-in Guides feature, this plugin is more intuitive and ensures all project elements remain in place.

The plugin allows you to add accurate guides, mark edges and midpoints, create custom grids for complex assignments, and even create guide templates to share them with others. The tool is superior to the native Guides feature and will save you precious time to improve your creation.

2. Filter Forge 8

Next is Filter Forge 8, a vast selection of custom filters, textures, and effects. It also allows you to create and save your custom filters.

It has a user-friendly node-based editor for quickly creating new filters. The backup/restore feature ensures you won’t lose any progress while creating custom filters.

The user-submitted library of custom filters offers over 12,000 options. You can also add your own custom filters. The latest version of the plugin supports tabs, allowing you to work on multiple images and apply different filters simultaneously.

3. Portraiture 3

Portraiture 3 is a great plugin for editing portraits without sacrificing quality. It eliminates the need for selective masking or pixel-by-pixel editing to remove blemishes and smooth out skin texture.

It has a user-friendly interface with all the necessary settings for editing a portrait displayed in one column. It also offers useful predefined presets for quick and effortless portrait editing. Additionally, the plugin allows users to create their own presets, which can be particularly useful for editing similar portraits.

4. Texture Anarchy

If you want to add cool textures to your images, the Texture Anarchy plugin is a great choice. It’s a collection of amazing textures that can be added to your images with just one click. The plugin has a simple user interface that allows you to select the texture, choose the blend mode, and adjust the opacity.

All textures are generated procedurally. You won’t have any resolution issues, regardless of the area you want to cover. The plugin also includes textures for borders. It allows you to manipulate the light source for 3D textures.

Pexels is a convenient plugin that allows you to access its vast library of free stock photos from within Photoshop. The plugin is useful when you need quick access to a stock photo, and it’s easy to use. Simply open the window and search for the desired image.

Pexels offers 30,000+ free photos, with 3,000+ new images added monthly. Like photos to conveniently access them in the Likes tab for your next project.

I spend a lot of time with Photoshop editing images, so the mentioned plugins are essential to my workflow. However, if you’re using the software for something different, you might find the exact plugins you need. In that case, I strongly suggest visiting the Adobe Exchange website to find plugins that match your workflow. There are many useful plugins available, so you’re likely to find what you need.

Next, if you’re new to Photoshop and unsure how to install plugins, check out the next article for a quick tutorial.