While Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom rule the photography kingdom, there plenty of things they just can’t do. Fortunately, both programs allow users to install plugins and filter sets to further enhance your photography.
The below list features some of our favorite apps – all of which play nicely with Adobe’s Creative Suite.
Topaz Labs
Best known for Topaz Adjust, Topaz Labs also includes fabulous plugins for clarity, noise, detail, glow, special effects and more. These are, perhaps, the most popular filters currently available to photographers.
A before and after photograph using Topaz Adjust
MacPhun
This great suite of photography apps and plugins includes the powerful Intensify – which gives your images a vibrant HDR look from a single photo. Another great app is Snapselect – an ultra-fast photo browser that isolates similar photos and helps you choose the best ones before import. (sorry PC users… it’s just for Mac)
Inside the MacPhun Intensify app.
Exposure
This powerful photo editing plugin allows you to recreate that old film look and feel on your digital images. Draw attention to your subject by manipulating focus, vignette and depth of field… and more. Exposure offers an endless array of visually creative options; from simulation of fast lenses to tilt-shift and motion blur looks.
Photo © Christopher Wilson – Created with Exposure
Perfect Effects 9.5
Enhance your photography by using Perfect Effect’s suite of beautiful and timeless filters. Highlights include lens flare, tilt-shift, faded matte, pastel bliss, silver sunset, vintage sun, color pop and more.
BlowUp 3
Ever want to get a large print out of a small digital photograph? With BlowUp’s amazing enlarging plugin, you can cover an entire wall with a photo from a 3 megapixel camera. At Dickerman Prints, we use this plugin for all our custom photographic enlargements.
BlowUp 3 lets you get the most detail possible in photo enlargements.