OnOne Software’s PhotoTools 2.5.4 Free is a fine collection of photographic filters, including cross-process, cyanotype, sepia toner, and vintage. Photoshop Edge FX lets you quickly overlay borders onto your photos. This plug-in is not compatible with Elements.

The borders are applied as masks, which preserves your original photo. You start by choosing from more than 60 preset borders and then resize and reposition the border after that, you can go ahead and apply layer styles such as Glow and Drop Shadow. Sebastien Piconnier’s Photoshop Edge FX 2.2 is a fun plug-in for Photoshop CS4 and CS5 that lets you enhance your photos with an arty graphic border. Of the six plug-ins highlighted below, four are effectively marketing tools for paid products from those developers. Moreover, Photoshop’s plug-in architecture is constantly evolving, with each new version of the application introducing incompatibilities with older plug-ins. As I researched this article, it quickly became apparent that while there are a wealth of free plug-ins available for Photoshop on Windows, there aren’t many for Photoshop on OS X.ĭevelopers say that Adobe’s tools make it cumbersome to port Windows-based plug-ins to OS X, and many of these freeware developers see little value in the effort. Note that this roundup consists of just six plug-ins.

Once installed, you can usually find the plug-in under the Filter menu in Photoshop, though some must be accessed through Window -> Extensions. Many plug-ins now include their own installer, however, and some newer plug-ins must be installed via the Adobe Extension Manager. You can install plug-ins by dragging the plug-in file into the application’s plug-in folder, found at Macintosh HD -> Applications -> Adobe Photoshop -> Plug-ins. Here’s a round-up of some of the most compelling freeware plug-ins currently available for Photoshop CS3, CS4, and CS5, and, in some cases, Photoshop Elements 8. Although most plug-ins are modestly priced, there are a number of cool plug-ins available completely free. Plug-ins are a great way to extend the functionality of Photoshop, adding fun filters and fresh features to the application.

Photoshop cs5 filters free