The Most Popular Photo Editing Plugins in Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is one of the most powerful photo editing tools used by both amateurs and professionals. However, additional plug-ins can further extend the functionality of Photoshop and simplify the editing process. Here's an overview of some of the most popular plugins that photographers use to manipulate photos in Photoshop.
Nik Collection
The Nik Collection, now under the umbrella of DxO, is a collection of eight powerful plugins that offer a variety of photo enhancement and processing features:
- Analog Efex Pro: Allows you to create a classic movie look.
- Color Efex Pro: A set of filters to enhance colors and tones.
- Silver Efex Pro: Specialized in black and white photography.
- Viveza: Local adjustment of colors and tones without masking.
- HDR Efex Pro: High Dynamic Range (HDR) creation tools.
- Sharpener Pro: Advanced focus tools.
- Fine: Denoising with advanced algorithms.
ON1 Effects
ON1 Effects is a powerful plugin that offers a wide range of filters, presets and adjustments to enhance your photos quickly and easily. Offers:
- Effects: More than 500 presets and filters.
- Layers and masks: Enables precise adjustment of individual parts of the image.
- Integration with Lightroom and Photoshop: Enables seamless switching between different programs.
Portraiture
Portraiture, developed by Imagenomic, is a specialized portrait retouching plugin. Its main functions include:
- Skin smoothing: Natural removal of irregularities, without loss of texture.
- Automatic skin detection: Enables quick and efficient editing.
- Customizable presets: Quick settings for different skin types and lighting.
Luminar AI
Skylum's Luminar AI is one of the most advanced plugins that uses artificial intelligence to process photos. Offers:
- AI Enhance: Automatic enhancement of colors, tones and details.
- Sky Replacement: Easy sky replacement with advanced scene analysis.
- Portrait tools: Retouching and enhancing portraits with AI.
Topaz Labs
Topaz Labs offers a wide range of plugins that use advanced algorithms and artificial intelligence:
- Topaz DeNoise AI: Noise removal without loss of detail.
- Topaz Sharpen AI: Sharpen images by correcting motion blur, focusing, or out-of-focus.
- Topaz Gigapixel AI: Enlarging images while maintaining quality.
- Topaz Adjust AI: One-click exposure, color and contrast corrections.
Exposure X7
Exposure X7 from Exposure Software is a powerful plug-in for simulating film looks and advanced photo processing. Offers:
- Cinematic effects: Authentic simulation of classic film materials.
- Advanced editing: Tools for retouching, masking and color adjustment.
- Non-linear workflow: Enables flexible and creative editing.
Boris FX Optics
Boris FX Optics is a plugin often used by photographers and filmmakers to add special effects and adjustments:
- Filters and effects: More than 160 filters and effects, including optical effects, lighting and textures.
- Masking and tracking: Advanced tools for precise editing.
- Integration with Photoshop: Easy to use within the Photoshop environment.
Conclusion
Plug-ins for Photoshop offer tremendous possibilities for improving and simplifying the photo processing process. Whether you're a beginner or a pro, these plugins can help you get better results, save time, and expand your creative possibilities. Each plugin has its own quirks and strengths, so it's worth trying out several different ones to see which one best suits your needs and work style. In any case, we need to have a good amount of experience and feeling here, because excessive processing can spoil even a good photo, but at the same time it will not improve a bad one. Above all, we must be well aware of what we want and be moderate about it. Plugins are a very good tool, but they are not all-powerful, and professional product photography still requires a lot of manual work to get good processing and retouching.
Tomaž Berčič
