From applying HDR effects to converting your images to black and white, there is a plugin for every situation, and in this post, we’ve gathered the best free Photoshop plugins for photographers.

You might also like this collection of free Photoshop plugins for UI designers.

HDR Sharpener Tool

This tool makes it easy to create HDR-like effects for your images instantly. It will increase the image’s dynamic range and sharpen it in a non-destructive manner.

KinemaPhoto-LITE

This Photoshop extension makes it easy to unleash your creative potential by creating cinemagraphs, GIFs, and other animations. You will be able to create still images from a video layer, create video loops, and more.

CineStock Photoshop (Envato Elements)

This resource gives you the 18 Photoshop actions to simulate the look of cinematic effects popularized by movies and television series. Each action contains all the adjustment layers and is non-destructive, so you retain your original.

Photo FX Photoshop Plugin

Gain access to 18 cool effects and filters to use when editing your images. The plugin includes eight different filters, nine different light leak effects, and a film grain effect that you can use immediately.

Tint and Black & White Conversion Plugin

This Photoshop tint plugin is perfect for adding tints to an image for artistic effect. Quickly apply a range of color tones or convert images into black and white for that retro feel.

Skin Beauty Retouch Plugin

Easily retouch skin tones with this plugin. With a 1-click application, you can make any skin tone free of blemishes and look beautiful. This is a handy plugin to make all your photos look their best.

Double Exposure (Envato Elements)

This Photoshop plugin gives you access to a set of 4 actions that simulate a double exposure effect. This effect works well with other Photoshop actions you may have installed.

Enhanced Sub-Pixel Diffusion

Thanks to this Photoshop plugin, you’ll have the power to perform sub-pixel diffusion effects. With sub-pixel diffusion, you can apply this effect when and where you need to apply antialiasing.

Generate Ascii Art

This Photoshop plugin makes it easy to convert your images into an ASCII stylized image. ASCII artworks by mapping heavier-toned ASCII characters to dark areas of your image and lighter-toned ASCII to the lighter areas. Not all images will translate well.

Oil Paint Photoshop Plugin

Convert any of your images into a realistic painted look without all the effort. In one click, you can transform any image with a resolution size of 1000 to 4000 pixels.

Anaglyph Photoshop Actions (Envato Elements)

Save time, money, and effort with this Photoshop resource. You will be able to quickly apply one of 4 basic anaglyph or 11 experimental anaglyph actions with a simple non-destructive click.

Generate Barnsley Fern Fractals

With this Photoshop plugin, you will be able to create wonderfully looking fractal designs. Generate eye-catching patterns in any color with a little mathematical help and create random fractals or manifest your creative streak with controls for asymmetry and scaling.

White Balance / Highlight Recovery Plugin

This powerful Photoshop plugin will apply a white balance to your images. This makes your photos brighter and have more contrast. Using images shot in a RAW format will produce the best results.

Halftone Print Simulation Plugin

This Photoshop plugin will simulate halftone imagery through the use of dots. The images you create with this plugin can be printed with each color channel independently or all together. You can lock or unlock the color channels for black and whites or creating masks.

VHS Photoshop Action (Envato Elements)

With this plugin, you will be able to quickly apply a glitched or VHS look to all your photos. Simply install the plugin, load your image and click play on the plugin. You will receive one action file, one pattern file, one brush file, and an instructional PDF.

Lens FX Plugin

Use this plugin to achieve special effects for all of your images. Choose from a pinch, push, sine variants, concave and convex versions, as well as waves or ripples. This plugin can help you create wonderful pieces of art.

stylize!

Stylize is a beautiful and artistically based plugin that transforms your images into something that looks painted, water-colored, or drawn. This will be a welcome addition to your Photoshop workflow, with dozens of styles to choose from.

Multi Purpose Pixelation Photoshop Plugin

With this plugin, you will be able to make pixel art out of any of your images. This plugin supports eight and 16-bit channels with a color channel mode for professional workflows.

Watercolor Photoshop (Envato Elements)

This Photoshop action can be used to create digital artwork with one click. This plugin will generate the watercolor art and multiple layers that you can further tweak and customize.

Remove.bg Plugin for Adobe Photoshop

With this plugin, you will save time working on backgrounds. Quickly and easily remove the backgrounds, even around challenging edges like hair. Use the layer mask to quickly remove or restore regions of an image.

Composition Grid Plugin

This plugin will help you generate a grid that you can apply to your photo for easier editing. Each grid is generated as a separate layer so that you can apply the theory behind the Rule of Thirds, Golden Ratio, and Dynamic Symmetry.

Generate Randomly Fitted Boxes

Quickly and easily generate a mosaic of randomly sized boxes from your images. This is a wonderful way to give your pictures a whole new artistic look. The box fitting tool provides control over how many boxes to create, the maximum size allowed, as well as an option to sample color from the original image or to use custom colors.

Summer Duotone (Envato Elements)

Save time with your image editing workflow with this resource highlighting the summer colors. This resource gives you 20 custom summer duotone actions to help get your summer design juices flowing.

Variable Channel Inversion Plugin

This simple but unique plugin allows precise, independent, and variable color channel inversion. This will yield impressive results when full control of each channel is used. Choose colors from 8 or 16-bit channels for your project.

Action Launcher Extension

If your Photoshop has amassed an extensive collection of actions and action sets, you will want to get this launcher. Quickly and easily find all of your actions, sort them through a favorites selection, and run the actions right from the launcher.

Highpass Sharpen Photoshop Plugin

This Photoshop plugin introduces another high-fidelity method of sharpening your images by using highpass frequencies. This is a method used by professionals in the production industry and a technique favored by professional photographers and photo retouchers alike.

Lens Vibrant Effects (Envato Elements)

With just a click, you can apply any of the twenty vibrant filters to make great images that can be used for blog posts, book covers, social media, and more.

PolarProjection Generator

This polar projection plugin turns your panorama pictures into their own little worlds. The plugin takes the pain from the long process of manually morphing panorama images into stereographic projections.

Automate Diptych & Triptych Layouts

Tych Panel is an extension that automates the creation of triptychs and diptychs. It also offers an easy way to set up your rows and columns for your image placement.

Stock Photo Site Photoshop Plugins

• Google Photos Photoshop Panel
• iStock Photoshop Plugins
• Shutterstock Photoshop Plugin
• Unsplash’s Photoshop Plugin
• Getty Photoshop Plugin
• Pexels Photoshop Plugin

Use this article to fill up your creative library with useful Photoshop plugins that will save you hours during the photo-editing process.

The post The 25 Best Free Photoshop Plugins for Photographers appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

Thankfully, there’s a solution to these problems: Photoshop plugins. These handy tools can help you streamline your workflow, save time, and help you collaborate more effectively. That’s why we’ve compiled this collection of the best free Photoshop plugins for UI designers.

With these plugins, you can simplify complex tasks, automate repetitive actions, and add new features to Photoshop, making it an even more powerful tool for user interface design. So if you’re looking to take your design game to the next level, these plugins are a must-have in your toolkit.

You might also like this collection of free Photoshop plugins for photographers.

Titlemizer Photoshop Plugin

This premium plugin will generate random relevant titles, leads, texts, dates, and usernames. The plugin supports the generation of English, Ukrainian, and Russian text for three thematic categories: Technology, Economics, and Politics.

Zoom Tool

If you ever need to see the fine details of your design, the Zoom Tool plugin will come in handy. The plugin supports scaling the design area to actual size and twice the size of the device area. Perfect for Retina screens!

Photoshop HTML Block

With the help of this plugin, you will be able to quickly generate HTML and CSS code from your UI designs. The plugin will also place the generated code inside a special block in Photoshop.

Slice Maker

The Slice Maker makes creating DPI assets for Android very easy. This Photoshop extension does all the heavy lifting and gives you control over each generated image before the export.

Seamless Pattern Creation Kit

Patterns can enrich any design, and with the help of this plugin, you can easily create seamless patterns with a click of a button.

Font Finder

If you use a lot of fonts in your designs, locating a particular font from a layer is cumbersome. This plugin solves that by allowing you to quickly identify and select layers by the font used.

FontAwesomePS

FontAwesome icons are one of the most popular icon sets, and with the help of this Photoshop plugin, you can now easily add them to your designs.

Louca UI Kit

This massive pack of UI elements contains 180 blocks made exclusively for Photoshop. All of the elements are vector-based and have well-organized layers.

Browser Layout Wrapper

Have you ever wanted to see how your Photoshop design looks in a browser without exporting it? This plugin makes it easy to capture the Photoshop document and turn it into a browser window inside Safari.

Craft Photoshop Plugin

Thanks to this plugin, you can easily sync your Photoshop designs to InVision for better and faster prototyping. This can significantly speed up your workflow by allowing you to design, prototype, and collaborate within your design environment.

Export all Text for PSD

Use this plugin to export all the text in your Photoshop file to a plain text file. This is useful if you’re working with real copy and need to translate the text into a different language.

Amber UI Kit (Envato Elements)

This modern and minimalistic UI kit can be used in Photoshop. It includes a 12-column layout, more than 1,000 icons, and tons of elements that will allow you to create a beautiful website mockup.

2xScaler

Quickly see how your design will look on retina screens with the help of this plugin. The plugin will double-scale your design without any loss of quality.

Griddify

Use this plugin to create custom grids in Photoshop. The plugin also allows you to create vertical rhythm, set gutters, and do other cool things with guides inside Photoshop.

WeDot Wireframe UI Kit (Envato Elements)

WeDot is a premium UI kit for Photoshop containing 170+ templates, so you can quickly prototype or design any kind of website or app in minutes.

EasyMockups Plugin

This free Photoshop plugin lets you easily create app prototypes and show off your designs. The plugin comes with ten mockups to choose from.

IsometrIcon Generator

Use this plugin to transform generic Photoshop shapes into isometric creations. The plugin comes with four different transformations and can even generate cubes.

Composer for Photoshop

Layer comps help you provide more context for your designs but can be tedious to update. This plugin makes it easy to update all your layer comps with a button click.

Paper Wireframe Kit (Envato Elements)

This paper wireframe kit makes creating clean and impressive wireframes for your projects easy.

Long Shadow Generator

Long shadows are all the rage now, and with this plugin’s help, you can quickly generate them whenever you want. The plugin gives you complete control over the shadow’s opacity and length.

Exporter for Game Developers

This plugin is an excellent choice for anyone needing advanced export options. It offers the combined functionality of layer comps, masks, and actions for advanced exporting tasks.

Expresso

If you’re a 3D artist, this plugin will come in handy. Using it, you can significantly improve your workflow as it offers a set of utility panels that speed up slow, repetitive, and error-prone tasks.

SuperPNG

Use this plugin if you export your designs as PNG files often. It offers greater control over the PNG export and better support for alpha channel handling.

Pixel to Vector Generator

This little plugin is one of the most popular Photoshop plugins. It offers a nifty functionality: easily convert pixel shapes into vector shapes so you can resize and manipulate them without losing quality.

Seamless Texture Generator

Ever wanted to create a seamless texture from a picture quickly? This extension will help you do just that and will do it in a fraction of the time needed to do it manually.

Renamy CC Plugin

Renaming your layers one by one is time-consuming, and this plugin solves that problem as it allows you to easily rename multiple plugins simultaneously.

Size Marks

Whether you’re trying to eliminate repetitive tasks or speed up your workflow, there is a Photoshop plugin out there that will help you achieve a particular task more efficiently. Stock up on Photoshop plugins and quickly rename multiple layers, gain better control over your PNG exports, and much more.

The post 30 Free Photoshop Plugins for UI Designers appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

There are a lot of questions about what exactly AI is capable of. A big one for web designers: Will it take our jobs? I’m not so sure about that. On the contrary, I believe this technology can be a boon to our industry.

When it comes to web design, there are several areas where AI can shine. A big one is in helping us avoid tedious tasks. But it can also serve as a quality assurance check – ensuring that our work is top-notch before deployment.

With that, here are some ways that AI can benefit web designers – including a few that you can take advantage of right now.

Writing Better Code

Coding can be a joy for some. But it can also lead us to rip out what few hairs we have left on our heads (OK, I’m speaking for myself on that one).

So much of writing clean code is a matter of getting the correct syntax. Miss a character here or there and it can cause an entire function to break. Even the smallest of errors cost us precious time.

There are plenty of great resources for learning and troubleshooting a language. But even they have limitations. Ever spend hours trying to shoehorn a snippet you found on Stack Overflow into your project?

This is where a more intelligent code editor can be a lifesaver. Imagine a tool that has a deep understanding of the language you’re working with and can accurately anticipate what you want to achieve with each line.

As futuristic as it may sound, this functionality is already available. GitHub Copilot is one such product. An add-on for existing code editors, it works with dozens of programming languages.

It goes beyond the ubiquitous “autocomplete” functionality and attempts to understand the context of what you’re writing. There are some incredible features here, like the ability to turn code comments into, well, actual code.

The potential here is huge. AI coding tools could increase efficiency, help us write more standards-compliant code, and avoid those pesky syntax errors. Not to mention how happy it will make your hair.

Image Editing

Photoshop and similar apps are a staple of a web designer’s toolbox. The ability to create, manipulate, and optimize images is a significant part of our job.

But even if you’re proficient in a particular app, some tasks require a lot of effort. Removing backgrounds and covering up unwanted aspects of an image are two that come to mind. It takes attention to detail and some fine motor skills to get things looking right.

This is an area where AI has perhaps made its biggest strides. Photoshop, for example, has features that can analyze an image and determine its primary subject. This has led to features that make it easier to perform various edits.

Thus, removing a background can take seconds rather than minutes. The accuracy isn’t always perfect, but the technology is rapidly improving. It’s another way AI can help us tame formerly frustrating tasks.

Website Accessibility

As an industry, web design has made significant strides in accessibility awareness. The idea of empowering all users to navigate and consume what we build isn’t some utopian dream – it’s part of our core mission.

Building accessible websites involve planning and sound processes. And we can’t forget about a regimen of testing as well. For instance, ensuring a website is navigable via a keyboard or getting first-hand experience with a screen reader.

AI could be of great use here – to a point. While it might be utilized to automatically detect (and perhaps repair) some issues, we can’t fully replace the human element. Context matters a great deal.

While AI can tell us that an image is missing an ALT attribute, it’s a stretch to expect the technology to detect how an image is being used. Is it purely decorative? We may still need to define that ourselves.

Still, for aspects like color contrast, code integrity, and readability, the right tool can make a huge difference. For an example, check out what the WAVE Tool is capable of. Then imagine what it (or a similar app) might do in the future.

Security

Website security keeps getting more complex. Threats are continuously evolving and aim to evade our attempts to defend against them.

Existing tools such as security plugins and firewalls are effective. They thwart the most common types of attacks and block malicious traffic. But they’re far from perfect solutions.

Would-be attackers keep on developing new tools and techniques as well. And it can take a while for our defenses to catch up. That means we may not have protection in time to prevent a hacked website.

Once again, AI could provide an answer. Consider an engine that analyzes traffic and code in real-time. One that can determine a threat – even without having seen it before. It then closes off the connection before any damage is done.

This also goes back to our earlier section on writing better code. It may well be able to prevent us from releasing software with security flaws in the first place. Think of all the time, money, and user data this could save.

Some of these technologies are already out in the wild. And they’re likely to improve over time.

A Safer, More Efficient Future?

There are a lot of opportunities for AI to assist web designers. We’re already starting to see it in some of the available tools on the market.

It could take on a portion of the heavy lifting that goes along with building a beautiful, functional, and accessible website. The hope is that it frees us up to focus more on the creative aspects of the process.

Inevitably, some tools will work better than others. And we may find that AI isn’t always the best answer. But it does have the potential to help us do our jobs better.

Will this technology live up to its promise? It will be exciting to find out!

The post Areas Where AI Can (and Already Is) Benefitting Web Designers appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.