1000s of Free Photoshop Plugins & Filters MegaList

Have you been looking for a way to add some extra zest to your Photoshop images? Have you wanted to find some cool Photoshop filters but didn't want to spend any of your cash? Well, I have put together a long list of Free Photoshop Plugin along with a summary of what you will find on each of these sites. Amongst all of these sites you will be able to find 1000s of Photoshop plugins and filters so I hope that you have some time on your hands. Please comment about sites that I have missed. Have fun Photoshopping.

You might also enjoy our List of Adobe Illustrator Plugins and Filters.

8bf Plugins - Free Photoshop plugins inlcuding plugins that can add an unending variety of frames to your images, filter to frame and matte your images, a texture frame filter, a plugin to add texture to frames, plugin for a transparent frame, plugin to use to allow layer beneath to show through and make a frame, adjust focus and all color values all at once, filter that adds grain or RGB noise to your images, filter that scatters your pixels, a plugin that is a transparency mask filter resembling marble, plugin that converts color to a single hue without affecting saturation or luminosity values, filter to blur only the colors of your image, not the luminosity, add a marble texture to your images, simplify your image for artistic effects, find and adjust edges for artistic effects,three median filters for image simplification and dust reduction, filter for an attempt at a watercolor wash, and many more.

Amphisoft - Free plug-in filters for Adobe Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Macromedia Fireworks, JASC and Corel PaintShop Pro, PhotoPaint and other image editors for Windows. Some of the filters include Photo Sharpen, Photo Tinter, Toadies, Photo Detailer, and a plugin set of 10 freeware and shareware plug-in filters for various special effects and general image editing.

Almathera Plugins - The Almathera plugins are free and you can create shape, bevel, halo, drop shadow, grayscale, warp, lightning and puddle effects.

Cybia Plug-In Filters - This freeware filters pack includes 6 filters with various transparency properties, 20 filters for modifying the colours in your images, 20 filters for producing edge/contour effects, 30 filters with different screen/mesh overlays, 20 filters containing simple emboss variations, 15 filters that "swap" colour values in your images, 20 filters to "blast" colours giving a strong cast, and 15 filters for producing mezzo and grain effects.

DCFilters - They have large selection of filters including ones for bricks, edger, border fade, color fade, ice, melt, pattern edit, problend, rough tile blend, and many more.

Deep Paint 2.0 - Deep Paint offers a realistic painting experience for digital artists and graphics professionals. Deep Paint intergrates stroke-by-stroke artistic photo-cloning, fully editable brush and canvas settings, and paint functionality for realistic and stunning paint effects. Experience thickly textured oils, bold acrylics, and dramatic watercolors. Deep paint simplifies your artistic workflow as a Photoshop plug-in or standalone application, with special support for the Wacom Intuos or compatible pressure sensitive pad.

Des Filtres - Site is in French but there must be a 100 filters that I believe are free.

Digital ArtShop - A large number of filters and plugins, but only a free of them are free including Greyscaler, Iridescent, Image Encoder, and Sketcher (this one isn't free but very cool).

Flaming Pear - The Flaming Pear download page includes plugins and filters including Creative Pack, Mr.Contrast, Flood, Cool Designer Plugins, Flexify, Polymerge, LunarCell, India Ink, Hue and Cry, Glitterato, Solar Cell, Photography Pack, Tesselation, Patterns, Free Plugins, and more.

Free Photoshop Plugins - You can download about a dozen free Photoshop plugins on Free Photoshop including Berthold Daum Filters, CPK Filters, Crescent Moon Filters, PNG Format Plugin, Sabercat Filters, Scribe Filters, Ripleyer Filter, Ripleyer Filter, Sabercat Filters, Scribe Filters, Ripleyer, Scan Line Plugin, Red Eye filter, and Pro Canvas plugin.

GraphicXtras - A selection of plugins for Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, and other programs. Some of the free Photoshop filters include filters for tons of custom shapes, gothic effects, frames, a 14 plugin demo set, and brushes.

GoPog - Filters include Mono Renditionizer, Lab Overlayer, Variable Blurrinator, Mono Renditionizer, and more.

Harry's Filters - Harry's Filters is a free Photoshop-compatible plugin containing up to 69 different image effects. They were formerly also known under the name "VideoRave". Harry's Filters 3 lets you choose the appropriate effect without hassling through different menus and dialogs. The main effect categories are called Color, Artistic, Gradients, Patterns, Warp, Noise, En/Decrypt, Other and Nature. They include 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 encrypting and decrypting images with 64 bit keys, produce zoom, mirror or paint effects as well as natural effects like lightning, tornado and polar lights.

Little Ink Spot - Little Ink Spot plugins include chalkoholic for a chalk effect on your photos, Thredholder which find edges on photos making a cool sketch like effect, and xpose plugin which is for effects such as contrasts, shadows, underexposed, pefectly exposed and balanced, washed out look, enriched and more.

Luce - Plugins for light effects.

Mayhem Studios - 4 free Adobe Photoshop filters to download including filters for red eye removal, a filter for repetitive tasks, a filter to sharpen your photographs, and a guides action that finds the center in a snap.

Mehdi Plugins - Free Photoshop plugins include Absolute Color Blots, Color MegaMix, Contrast Balance, Curves, Edges Fx, Equalizer, Eraser Classic, Eraser Genuine, Fine Threshold, Fur, Gradient Smithy, Grain Natural, HSL Plus, Julia World, Kaleidoscope, Local Equalization, Melt, Projection, Posterizer, Quick Mirror, Seamless Border, Sorting Tiles Vibrations, Wavy Lab, and Weaver.

Mezzoforce Plugins - Lite versions of the Mezzoforce plugins are free including Mezzoforce Ice, Mezzoforce PainterTool, Mezzoforce Metalyzer, and Mezzoforce WaterColors.

MV's Plugins - A collection of Photoshop compatible plugins that are free to download including filters for correct chromatic aberration and purple fringing, a 3D color analysis tool, a filter to eplace specific color (even gray), a plugin to manage images with high dynamic range Debarreller, a plugin that is sort of histogram stretching, a plugin to fill an area by interpolation from neighbor pixels, a tool to undo color clipping in overexposed regions, a plugin for pre- or postprocessing for panorama stitching, a plugin that is a variant of "Fill" Perspective, a plugin to tilt and pan your image, a fun tool to distort images, a filter for red eyes removal, a tile puzzle creator, a filter that is a kind of a healing brush, a plugin to compensate or apply vignetting effects, and a filter for sharpening without halos.

NameSurpressed Photoshop Plugins - These plugins are free for only 21 days, so it is up to you whether or not you want to thry them. These products include the Softener soft focus plugin, Plaid Lite for seamless plaid patterns, and Autochromatic for sepia & color effects

Phillip Spoeth Plugins - Here are a few Photoshop plugins, one of them creates cool patterns, one of them creates a 3d rendering wire effect, distortions efffect, and one that creates a dot grid...very cool.

Photoshop Filters Factory - About 400 free Photoshop filters. This is the largest collection of filters available for Photoshop, they are all free and made with the Filter Factory module (provided with PS) by various authors.

Photoshop Scripts Plugins - A Spanish site with freeware filters. The plugins are called Watercolor, B&W, drawing, Dream, Threshold, Tone Effect, Splash, High-Key, Dynamic Color, Convolution Draw, Graduated Filter and Center Spot.

Photo-Plugins - These seem to be high quality Photoshop plugins including these plugins - B/W Conversion, Selective Saturation, Local Contrast, High Pass Sharpen, Soft Focus, Lens Correction, Contrast Mask, and Gradient Blur.

Plugin Site - A large selection of plugins / filters including filters for color correction, contrast, exposure and saturation of photos, filters for sharpening photos, plugin for performing shadow/highlight, lighting and color-based corrections, a mosaic plugin, illumination plugin, a plugin a tool for B/W conversion, for creating traditional B/W effects and for enhancing B/W photos, a collection of free plugins for performing usefull photo manipulations and effects, a page curl plugin, star field, diffuse, rippled glass, cave edge, jungle edge, curved edge, cutline edge, quad feedback, tunnel feedback, space worm, dragon's tail, butterfly, plate, wall, RGB saturation, erode En/Decryption and cross En/Decryption, frosted edge, zebra stripe, gradient sky.

Richard Roseman - Many very good Photoshop filters here including 3D Sphere Generator, Color Bar Generator, Scanlines Generator, Grid Generator, Grain Generator, Diffuse Glow, Spherical Mapping Corrector, Lens Distortion Corrector, Diffusion Effects, Halftone Patterns, Pixelate, Tiler, Pinch Distortion, Squarify Distortion, Evaluate ( 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), Portable PixMap, Superformula Geometric Shapes, Solid Border, Smart De-Interlacer, Ultimate Artist Aggravator, Lens FX, and Pixel Quantification.

Sloshifiers - If you have photoshop or one of those other programs by adobe that supports photoshop plugins, you can download the photo killers plugin. it contains many effects of the photo killer, but they are not all exactly the same. For example, irradiate is a lot worse, and grapeify is just a "fake" because the real grapeify is too complicated for photoshop, apparently. But, the filters do run a lot faster on photoshop It containsirradiate, advanced gray, advanced gray2, change dark shoes, change shoes, drunkenness, fat dead, grapeify, humanoid, invert color, irradiate, kindofinvert, pastelize, please clayify, space chalk, stress test, true black and white.

Easy Filter - Free plugins including color curve correction, and an image color adjustment plugin.

ULead Free Plugins and Goodies - Free Photoshop goodies including the filters for digital tie-dye by creating multi-color patterns swirls and backgrounds, a plugin for 8 natural particle effects for images and selections - smoke, fire, bubbles, clouds, rain and mor, a plugin to take any image or selection and warp, distor, and twist it into surreal patterns, and also a plugin that changes DV Type I format video to DV Type II.

VanDerLee - Inlcudes both free and commercial Photoshop plug-ins. The free ones includes plugins that generate realistic camouflage patterns in Photoshop, render harmonic waves, add realistic night-goggle and imaging distortion to images, render falling snowflakes, confetti and other particle effects in Photoshop, and a plug-in to cover any landscape or object in snow.

Vector Plugins - This page is in Japanese but the plugins are still usable if you speak English. The plugins include 13area, 1stImpact, 3DTile, Adjuster, Alchemist Pro, Ancient Paintings, BambooCraft, Bedlam, Bokassher, ButColor, ButtonMagic, ClassicalGold, CoolColor, CrazyTile, CuteMozaic, CycloidDistortion, DeftMove, DemonishCell, DemonishSkin, Eloquency, Embossher, Enhancer, EqualLevel, FillHarmony, FireWork, FlowerFrame, FlushIt, FoolishStripe, Gingum.

Verlag Martin Koch Plugins - A small collection of Photoshop plugins that can dither, cleanup, create halftones, and create lines (only the lines and dither filter are free).

Virtual Photographer - Download the free Photoshop plug-in that's getting rave reviews from digital photographers. virtualPhotographer lets you instantly apply high quality, professional photographic styles to your digital images, with just one click. virtualPhotographer includes over 50 presets that automatically apply combinations of film grain, color modification, B/W, soft focus, high contrast and many artistic effects to achieve the same professional-looking images that used to take hours of photo editing. Get results in seconds!

Xero Graphics - Free Adobe Photoshop filters including filters that create starburt effects, monochromes, Oil-painting effects, snowflakes and manic mandalas, sparkles, twinkles, blobs, glowing mistification, conversion of a layers to grayscale, lithography effect, moonlit nights, porcelain, foliage effects, skycleaner, grain effects, modern art effects, cubism artistic effects, illustrator artistic effects, fog filter, clean up noise, artistic 'wash' effects, ultraviolet effects, duochrome two-colour tinting effects, emphasis or de-emphasise selected colours, fuzzifier, de-noising and sharpening, lineart 'graphic art' effect, pastel art effect, image texturiser, tweaker for shadows and highlights, abstract art, painterly effects, pixellation, iridescent metallic sheens, virtual studio lighting, touch of romance for portraits, graphic poster effects, vignette effects, and titanium metal effects.

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial: Simple Reflective Surface

this Photoshop tutorial, we're going to create a simple reflective surface effect for our type. You've probably seen this technique used everywhere, and yet it's extremely easy to do (which could possibly explain why it's used everywhere).

Step 1: Create A New Photoshop Document

As usual, let's create a new document inside Photoshop, either by going up to the File Menu at the top of screen and selecting "New...", or a much quicker way is to use the keyboard shortcut, "Ctrl+N" on a Win system or "Command+N" on a Mac. Either way brings up Photoshop's "New Document" dialog box. Choose the 640x480 size from the Preset drop-down selection box.

Adobe Photoshop Text Effects: Create a new document in Photoshop. Use the 640x480 preset document size

As usual, there's no particular reason why I've chosen 640x480 as my document size other than for the sake of simplicity.

Step 2: Select The Type Tool From The Tools Palette

We can't add a reflective surface to our type without having some type to reflect, so we need to grab the Type tool from Photoshop's Tools palette. It's the icon about halfway down the Tools palette with a capital "T" as its icon. You can either click on it directly in the Tools palette, or use the keyboard shortcut, which is to simply press the letter "T" (as in "T" for Type Tool). Always try to use keyboard shortcuts whenever possible when you're first learning Photoshop, since the sooner they become second nature to you, the more efficient you'll be with the program.

Adobe Photoshop Text Effects: Select the Type tool from Photoshop's Tools palette or press the letter "T" on the keyboard.

Step 3: Select A Color For The Type

As with most things in Photoshop, there's always more than one way to accomplish the exact same thing, and selecting colors is no exception. This time, to keep things simple, let's use the Swatches palette, which contains quite a few "ready to go" colors that we can just click on to select.

The Swatches palette is docked, by default, with the Color palette, another of Photoshop's ways to let us pick colors. To access the Swatches palette, look for the Color palette on your screen, and then look up at the name tab of the Color palette, where it says "Color". Immediately to the right of that tab, you'll see another tab, faded out and hiding in the background, which says "Swatches". That's the Swatches palette hiding back there. We want to bring the Swatches palette forward and send the Color palette back into the shadows, and all we have to do to accomplish this is click on the Swatches name tab. The Swatches palette will instantly move to the forefront and the Color palette will retreat into the background.

Adobe Photoshop Text Effects: Locate the Color palette on your screen, then click on the Swatches name tab to the right of the Color palette's name tab to bring the Swatches palette forward and send the Color palette into the background.

*Note: If you don't see the Color or Swatches palette anywhere on your screen, press the F6 key on your keyboard, which is a shortcut to show and hide the Color palette. Since the Swatches palette is docked with the Color palette, the F6 key also shows and hides the Swatches palette, as well as the Styles palette which is also docked by default with Color and Swatches. Photoshop docks palettes together like this in order to save space on the screen.

To select a color from the Swatches palette, just move your mouse over it and click the color. You'll see your cursor turn into a small eyedropper, as if you're sucking the color up into the eyedropper to use it. I'm going to select the "RGB Red" color in the top left corner of the Swatches palette, but feel free to select any color you prefer.

Adobe Photoshop Text Effects: Move your mouse over any color in the Swatches palette and click on the color to select it. Here, I'm choosing "RGB Red".

Step 4: Select A Font To Use

We have our Type tool, and we have our color. Now, we just need to select a font. You can see a list of all the fonts you currently have installed on your computer up in the Options Bar at the top of the screen, directly below the Menu Bar. The name of your currently selected font is displayed in a selection box on the left side of the Options Bar. To scroll through a list of every available font, simply click the down-pointing arrow to the right of the selection box.

You can choose any font you like for this effect, but keep in mind that this effect works best when using all capital letters. The reason will become clear at the end of the tutorial.

I'm going to select Trajan Pro for my font, but again, feel free to use whichever font you prefer. I'm also going to choose a large size for my font, 72pt. The size for your font is located two selection boxes over to the right of the main font selection box in the Options Bar. It will have a number in it, followed usually by "pt" (for "point"). You can click on the down-pointing arrow to the right of the font size selection box to choose from a list of preset font sizes (which is where I chose 72pt from) or you can type your own font size value into the selection box.

Step 5: Type Your Text

Now that we have our Type tool, our font and our color for the type, we can actually type something. Since this is a tutorial on creating a reflective surface, I'm going to type the word "REFLECTION", and I'm going to use all capital letters to maximize the effect (and to avoid any problems, as I'll explain at the end).

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Adobe Photoshop Text Effects: Type a word into the document using the Type tool.

Step 5: Duplicate The Type Layer In The Layers Palette

In order to create the reflection effect, we need a copy of our text to use as the reflection. With the text layer selected in the Layers palette (it should be selected but if for some reason it isn't, simply click on it in the Layers palette to select it), press the keyboard shortcut "Ctrl+J" (Win) or "Command+J" (Mac), which will give us a copy of our text layer above the original in the Layers palette.

Adobe Photoshop Text Effects: With the text layer selected, press "Ctrl+J" (Win) or "Command+J" (Mac) to create a copy of the layer directly above the original in the Layers palette.

Step 6: Flip The Original Text Layer Vertically

Now that we have two copies of our text layer (the original plus the copy), we can use one of them as the reflection. Let's use the original text layer as the reflection. Since the reflection is going to be an upside down version of the text, the first thing we need to do is flip the text upside down. Make sure the original text layer is selected in the Layers palette before we go any further (click on it in the Layers palette if it isn't). We don't want to accidentally flip the wrong layer, not that it really matters in this case, but since we've agreed to use the original text layer as our reflection, let's stick to the plan.

With the original text layer selected, go up to the Edit Menu at the top of the screen. Click the word "Edit" to bring up the list of available options under the Edit Menu, and select "Transform". A sub menu will appear with additional options, and the one we want is at the very bottom of the list, "Flip Vertical". Click on it to select it, and you'll see the original text in the document flip upside down.

Adobe Photoshop Text Effects: Select the original text layer in the Layers palette, then select Transform - Flip Vertical from the Edit Menu at the top of the screen.

Step 7: Nudge The Flipped Text Down Below The Regular Text

Next, we need to move the flipped text below the normal "unflipped" text, and it's really easy to do. With the flipped text layer selected in the Layers palette, just use the down arrow on the keyboard to nudge the text downward. You'll have to select the Move tool from the Tools palette first though, since this only works with the Move tool selected. Just press the letter "V" on the keyboard to quickly select it. Now with the Move tool selected, press the down arrow on the keyboard. Each time you press the down arrow key, you'll nudge the text down by 1 pixel. If things are moving a little too slow for you, you can hold the Shift key down while you press the arrow key, which will nudge the text in increments of 10 pixels rather that just 1.

Continue nudging the text down until the top of the flipped text is touching the bottom of the "unflipped text".

Adobe Photoshop Text Effects: Nudge the flipped text down until the top of it is touching the bottom of the normal "unflipped" text.

Step 8: Add A Layer Mask To The Flipped Text

We're just a couple of steps away from being finished. We've nudged our flipped text below the regular text, but it still doesn't look right. We need to make the flipped text fade out as it gets further away from the regular text. How can we do that? By adding a layer mask, that's how.

Rather than sitting through a lengthy discussion about what a Layer Mask is, let's just use one. The more you use them, the faster you'll understand them, and they're by no means rocket science. It just takes a while to wrap your mind around them, that's all. Let's go ahead and add a Layer Mask to our flipped text layer.

At the bottom of the Layers palette is a row of icons. One of them looks like a square shape with a round hole in the center of it. This is the "Add a layer mask" icon. With the flipped text layer selected, click the icon and watch what happens to the flipped text layer in the Layers palette.

Adobe Photoshop Text Effects: Click the "Add a layer mask" icon at the bottom of the Layers palette to add a layer mask to the flipped text layer.

Notice that the flipped text layer now has a white rectangle in it. This is the Layer Mask preview area. Doesn't look like much, does it? Trust me though, it's extremely useful, and the day you completely understand how layer masks work is the day your creativity with Photoshop skyrockets.

By default, layer masks are filled with white, and that's because of the way layer masks work. Any part of a layer where the layer mask is white will be completely visible (100% opaque). Any part of a layer where the layer mask is black will be completely hidden (100% transparent), and we can set any part of a layer to various levels of transparency using gray levels between white and black on the layer mask. The closer the gray is to white on the mask, the more visible that part of the layer will be. The closer the gray is to black, the less visible that part of the layer will be. Photoshop gives us a whopping 256 levels of transparency to play with when using layer masks, meaning white, black, and 254 shades of gray in between.

That sounds like exactly what we need in order to fade our flipped text gradually out of view. We just need a way to create a black-to-white gradient in the layer mask to achieve that effect. As luck would have it, Photoshop happens to come with a Gradient tool for just such a task.

Step 9: Select The Gradient Tool From The Tools Palette

Select the Gradient tool from the Tools palette. It's the one that looks like a rectangle filled with a white-to-black gradient. Or, you can press the letter "G" (for "Gradient") on the keyboard for a quick shortcut.

Adobe Photoshop Text Effects: Select Photoshop's Gradient tool from the Tools palette, or press "G" on the keyboard.

With the Gradient tool selected, Photoshop's context-sensitive Options Bar at the top of the screen will switch to displaying the options specific to the Gradient tool. On the left of the Options Bar, you'll see a gradient preview selection box showing the currently selected gradient. If the gradient showing in the bar is the black-to-white gradient, you're good to go. If it's showing a gradient with different colors, click on the down-pointing arrow to the right of the selection box to view all the gradients which are currently available. The black-to-white gradient is the third one from the left on the top row. Simply click on it to select it, and then click anywhere else on the screen to close the gradient selection box.

Adobe Photoshop Text Effects: If the black-to-white gradient isn't the one currently showing in the Options Bar when you select the Gradient tool, click the down-pointing arrow to the right of the gradient preview box and select it from the list.

Step 10: Select The Layer Mask In The Layers Palette

Before we do anything with our Gradient tool, we need to make sure that the layer mask, not the layer itself, is selected for our flipped text layer in the Layers palette, since we want to create our gradient on the mask, not the layer itself. You can tell if the layer mask is selected because if it is, it will have a white highlight box around the layer mask preview area (the white-filled rectangle). If the layer itself is selected, the highlight box will be around the layer preview area, which in this case is the rectangle with the letter "T" in it, signifying that it's a Type layer.

The easiest way to make sure the layer mask is selected is to simply click on the layer mask preview area on the flipped text layer. If it was selected, it will stay selected, and if it wasn't, it is now.

Adobe Photoshop Text Effects: In the Layers palette, click on the layer mask preview area for the flipped text layer to make sure it's selected before we use the Gradient tool.

Step 11: Drag The Gradient Tool Across The Text To Create The Mask And Complete The Effect

Here we are at the final step. With the layer mask selected, all we need to do now is drag out a gradient to gradually fade out our flipped text.

I'm going to start my gradient roughly halfway between the top and bottom of the flipped text below, and then drag up until I've reached roughly halfway between the top and bottom of the regular "unflipped" text above. Also, I'm going to hold down my Shift key as I'm dragging the gradient upward, which will keep my drag in a perfectly straight vertical line, preventing me from accidentally dragging a little to the left or right and messing up my gradient.

Adobe Photoshop Text Effects: With the Shift key held down to constrain my drag to a perfectly straight vertical line, I begin my gradient halfway between the top and bottom of the flipped text below and drag upward to the halfway point between the top and bottom of the regular text above.

When I release my mouse, Photoshop draws my gradient, successfully fading my flipped text out of view and completing the effect, and this Photoshop tutorial.

Adobe Photoshop Text Effects: The final reflected type effect.

Source : Photoshop Essentials.com

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