20 Best FREE Photoshop Plugins & Filters: Still Good in 2026

Photoshop hardly needs introductions. As the industry standard for any sort of image manipulations, millions of people worldwide use it for all sorts of creative tasks. Back when Photoshop was a much more limited program, folks turned to plugins to expand the limits of what they could do with Photoshop.

These days,your basic Photoshop now does what you used to need tons of now-outdated plugins for. I wouldn’t blame you for believing that in 2026, plugins have become a thing of the past. I wouldn’t blame you, but here’s the thing – you’d be mistaken.

There are still plenty of powerful Photoshop plugins that can expand the software’s functionality, streamline your work, or make otherwise-arduous tasks as simple as clicking a button.

We went out and found some of the best and most interesting plugins and filters that are still worthwhile. Some are new and exciting, some are old-school tools that still do the job, but either way, these plugins are great additions for any creative’s toolbox.

Luminar Neo

Many of the apps on this list made the cut because even though they seemingly haven’t been updated in ages, they still offer tools that would be useful in a modern workflow. Luminar Neo isn’t one of those apps.

Back before everything was AI, Luminar offered one of the first AI-powered integrations to retouch images non-destructively. As the times have evolved, so has Luminar. Now called Luminar Neo, it offers a full suite of powerful AI enhancement tools like image resizing, automatic color grading and facial retouches, fine color controls, sky replacement tools, and much, much more.

Luminar Neo is available as both a standalone app and a Photoshop plugin. Though it’s not free, it offers a 7-day free trial and perpetual licences, that means that once you pay for the software, you own it completely.

ON1 Effects

ON1 Effects used to be the equivalent of an Instagram filter app on steroids. It offered plenty of different good-looking filters to automatically add powerful visual flair to your images. Though it still comes with a variety of professional-looking Lookup Tables (LUTs), ON1 Effects now offers a full suite of image stylization features.

Besides just improving your color grading, ON1 Effects can help you add weather effects to photos, automatically retouch specific objects in your image, and make stunning image compositions. You can get ON1 Effects as a standalone app or a plugin for Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop, Capture One, Affinity Photo, and Corel Paint Shop Pro.

Topaz GigaPixel

We’ve all had the same problem, right? You’re trying to create a nice composition when you notice that the image you took with your smartphone doesn’t look sharp enough, or maybe that photo you nabbed off the internet has a much lower resolution than you initially thought. When that happens, you might have probably googled “Image Upscaler” before running into a ton of results that range from disappointing to tragic.

TopazLabs’ Gigapixel offers decent image upscaling features. Available as both a standalone app and a Photoshop and Lightroom plugin, Gigapixel can increase the resolution of your image by up to 16x (though if you need to upscale your image by 16x, you should probably consider investing in a new camera). Besides that, it also offers RAW file support, CMYK conversion and support for printing, and batch processing options for speed.

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Nik Collection

The Nik collection is, like other entries on this list, a whole set of tools designed to make it easy to edit your photos quickly. You can adjust colors, add filters, tone-map HDR images, sharpen your photos, remove visual noise, make fancy black and white images, and more.

The Nik Collection’s difference is that it includes “U Point” technology. This technology allows you to define the areas of an image you want to edit (or leave intact) without manually selecting everything. You can apply localized edits a lot faster.

Layer Batch

Keeping your layers organized in Photoshop is a long-term labor of love. And it’s always worth the effort. There’s nothing worse than opening up a PSD file and thinking, “Who set it up like this? Where is everything? Oh God… was this me?”

Well, the Layer Batch panel can reduce some of your workload. Not only can it batch rename layers as needed, but it can also batch process layer transformations, apply effects and actions to each layer separately, and even let you select layers by type. It’s a small tool that could save you hours over a week, and hundreds if not thousands of clicks.

Renamy

Sometimes, you don’t need a plugin that does everything. A plugin that does one thing well is just enough. To that end, Renamy is a bit like Layer Batch’s kid brother. All it does is rename layers, all at once, and does it well.

Of particular interest to nerds like me is that you can use Regex to add variables to your layer-renaming scheme. The basics of Regex aren’t too hard to learn, and are useful in things like searching for files on your computer. Full disclosure: Renamy hasn’t been updated in a while, but the plugin still works for the latest Photoshop release.

GuideGuide

Any designer who has worked with Photoshop knows that one of the more annoying things you might have to do is create a grid using the guide feature. You have to calculate all the pixels yourself and drag and drop the guides to the right place; it’s a whole thing.

Well, GuideGuide is a simple plugin that can easily set up guides, grids, and calculate everything for you. Pick how many columns and rows you want, set your gutters, and forget about it.

Dehancer

If you’ve ever talked for even a couple of minutes with someone who still shoots film, you’ll know how annoying they can be about the film look, the “warmth” of an image, and just all the ways in which film is the superior medium. If you’ve ever shot on film, you’ll know that they’re kind of right.

For all the wonders of the modern age, replicating a film look on digital formats remains elusively difficult. That’s why there are so many different apps, plugins, LUTs and who-knows-what-else that offer exactly that. Hey, Dehancer isn’t even the only one on this very list.

The thing is, Dehancer looks fantastic. Not only does Dehancer handle colors to match more than 60 different film profiles, it also does a remarkable job emulating artifacts like film damage, grain, halation, and more.

Retouch4me

Retouch4me isn’t so much a plugin as much as it is a whole heap of different plugins meant to help you refine and retouch (hence, the name) your portrait shoots. These include advanced plugins to seamlessly remove small details like blemishes on skin, whiten teeth, enhance eyes, remove stray hairs and much more.

Retouch4me even offers an AI-powered plugin to add different makeup styles to your model’s face. Though a lot of Retouch4me plugins require payment, its frequency separation and LUT manager plugins are 100% free.

Adobe Camera Raw

Okay, so this is a no-brainer for most photographers, but many newbies might not know about it. Adobe Camera Raw is a free plugin from Adobe, and it’s actually installed with Photoshop every time. It lets you edit RAW files.

RAW files are a specialized photo format that carries extra information that you won’t find in a JPG file, for example. When editing a RAW file, you can change its colors, brightness, contrast, and more without actually destroying any data. You can even add some basic effects, then come back and make changes to your photo any time while never losing the original.

Double Exposure

This quick and easy (and free!) smart action allows you to create the classic double exposure effect without needing to use a film camera. It comes with adjustment layers that allow you to tweak the look and colors of your composite image easily.

Texture Anarchy

Sometimes you don’t want realism, and you need something that looks textured and weird. Something that defies normal, natural color schemes and structures. That’s where Texture Anarchy comes in.

If the UI looks dated, that’s because Texture Anarchy has been the premiere “weird texture and border” generator for a long-long time. Does it look real ‘90s? Well yes. But you’re the designer. It’s up to you to employ some… aesthetic restraint.

Lumenzia

Lumenzia is a full panel of color grading tools for Photoshop, giving you precise control of adjustments for specific color ranges, mask adjustment options, local contrast enhancements, and more. It really is an all-in-one plugin for photographers who like to tinker with their photographs a little more.

BrushBox

If you do any sort of digital art, you’ll know just what a pain keeping all your brushes organized can be. That’s where BrushBox comes into play. Used by industry giants like Marvel, DC, and Disney, BrushBox does the relatively-straightforward job of keeping your brushes organized with options like clear tags, color coding, custom brush settings.

If you use BrushBox’s brushes, it also allows you to change brush size and colors without having to create copies. The plugin is old, but it works just fine with the newest Photoshop releases.

Raya Pro

Some plugins are a one-stop-shop for all your image editing needs. Others don’t need to be. Raya Pro does one thing: Luminosity Masks, and it does them really well. Thanks to a ridiculously in-depth mask panel, you’ll be able to get and edit precise color ranges within your image, which is especially ideal if you work with heavy color grading or digital HDR.

Eye Candy

Here’s another blast from the past: the Eye Candy filter plugin. It’s a set of tools that can liven up your images with over 1,000 filter presets in 32 categories. Now, most of these presets are dated, it’s true. But the presets aren’t really the point.

The point is to play around and make something of your own by trial and error. You can combine all the effects you want to create one that is uniquely yours. Go on! Tinker to your heart’s content.

RNI All Films 5

Yet another film emulator on this list, Really Nice Images’ All Films 5 is another option that’s highly-recommended by industry professionals. All Films 5 is available as a Lightroom plugin. Unlike generic film LUTs, it uses an advanced process that takes data from your RAW files to recover hidden details that an actual film camera would capture.

It also offers some of the best RAW highlight compression I’ve seen, which is something that a lot of software just flat out fails at. It’s on the pricier side, but at least it’s not on some subscription model like almost everything these days. Once you buy it, it’s yours forever.

21 Vintage Effects

Speaking of retro graphics, you could skip the plugin and use this template file with 21 vintage effects built-in. Okay, it’s not quite the same. These effects are specifically for use with photos, meant to make them look old but not so weathered. They still look cool, though.

BorisFX Optics

BorisFx’s Optics plugin might appeal to a niche market, but that niche market is sure to love what it offers. While its film emulation or regular color-grading features aren’t its strongest suit (though it still does them better than many plugins out there), Optics is ideal for creating stunning VFX and graphical compositions.

Its features include advanced particle effects, smart light ray simulation, AI masking tools, and hundreds of presets so you can get up-and-running with your graphical compositions as fast as possible.

Real Snow Smart Action

Need a picture to look cold and snowy but don’t have any falling snow nearby? This action will fix that for you. A couple of clicks, and you’re walkin’ in a winter wonderland.

How to Install a Photoshop Plugin or Filter

There are three different ways to install a plugin for Photoshop, each of them pretty simple. First, you can install tons of plugins and smart actions from Adobe’s Creative Cloud marketplace. 

You can access this from the Creative Cloud desktop app. From there, search through your options, click on the one you want, and go. If it’s not a free plugin, you’ll have to pay up somewhere in that process, but it’s simple.

Some of the larger, more popular plugins have their own installers. In these cases, you just download the installers, run them, and follow the instructions. Many will even detect your current installation of Photoshop and do most of the work.

Then there’s manual installation. Some plugins will require you to download them and extract (or copy and paste) them into Photoshop’s dedicated plugin folder. This is usually located somewhere like “C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CC (64 Bit)\Plug-ins”. If you installed Photoshop somewhere else… look there.

Conclusion

This list does not encompass all the best plugins, filters, and smart actions available. The Photoshop community is vast, with individuals generously sharing resources for free and others sustaining their livelihoods by selling them.

But these are the ones I found most interesting, at least for now. Let me know which you liked best. And if you have any plugin recommendations, why not leave a comment?