In this article, I share the six best plugins for Photoshop and Lightroom. They can help you take your photo editing to the next level by offering better sharpening, selections, focus stacking, and other creative ways to enhance your images.
I’ve been using some of these plugins for almost 10 years and they are an integral part of my photo editing workflow. I’ll start the presentation with two free extensions before diving into the premium plugins that are paid to use. Here’s what I cover:
You probably won’t need all of these plugins for your editing workflow. But even the ones that aren’t free include a trial version. The least you can do is test these tools and see if they can help you edit your photos.
Web Sharpener Extension for Photoshop
It’s not enough to resize your images in Photoshop or Lightroom to make your photos look perfect on the web. You should apply a suitable resizing and sharpening method to provide the best possible results. When I heard about it over a decade ago, there wasn’t a plugin that could do all the work with a single click. At the time, I created Photoshop actions to do multi-step resizing, sharpening separation into dark and light edges, and other small adjustments. Adjusting these actions meant re-recording them, which wasn’t very flexible.
Luckily, Andreas Resch has packed all his knowledge about preparing photos for the web into his Web Sharpener extension. Installation is free via its home page or directly from Adobe.
The extension is easy to use. You can either select Quick sharpening Or Standard sharpeningwhich allows you to better control the results. Once you have made your main adjustments, including Final sizeyou can save presets for your different takes. Instagram is already included.
Nik Collection
The Nik Collection has always been my favorite plugin collection. After Google bought it several years ago, it made it available for free. They have since sold it to DXO, who continue to develop and improve the Nik collection. They also ensure that it works on the latest systems.
But the free version is still available with everything you need to creatively spice up your images, reduce noise, or sharpen your photos for printing.
There are, however, some limitations. The old version seems to no longer work on a new MacOS. But it works fine on Windows. Here, the only problem you might face is the size of the panels and sliders. If you have a 4K display, it may be too small to use properly. Test the collection and see for yourself if you can use it. Otherwise, be sure to check out the DXO version as it also offers a free trial.
If you follow the steps below, you will be able to get them working in the latest versions of Photoshop and Lightroom:
- Download the installer.
- Start the installer.
- When prompted to select your host software, click the plus icon at the bottom of the list to add new host software.
- Select the “Plug-ins” folder for your current Photoshop installation and create a “Google” subfolder. For me it is “C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop 2024\Plug-ins\Google” on Windows.
- Continue the installation.
Once you start Lightroom or Photoshop, the Nik Collection should be available. To apply an effect from the collection in Photoshop, you must create a new layer and apply the effects directly to that layer to avoid crashes. Don’t let Nik Extensions create a new layer for you. You can change the plugin settings to apply the effects directly to the current layer.
Lumenzia Add-on for Photoshop
Greg Benz developed Lumenzia into a powerful Photoshop add-on. At first, its goal was to simplify the creation of luminosity masks. Since then, the number of ways you can adjust your selections and target edits in Photoshop has increased. I only know the tip of the iceberg, which is Lumenzia. If you want to exploit its full potential, follow Greg Benz’s YouTube channel, where he regularly shares new workflows supported by Lumenzia.
Lumenzia is available for only $40*. With the purchase you get all the updates, which is remarkable considering all the work put into continually improving the software. If I had to choose just one extension that I can’t live without from the ones I show in this article, it’s this one.
Helicon Focus for Lightroom
I have been stacking my landscape and architecture images for over ten years. Because I never liked the results I got from Photoshop’s auto-stacking, I always did it manually using masks. This worked well until I visited Costa Rica and started delving more into forest photography. Stacking these images manually was impossible and I needed help.
Back then I discovered Helicon Focus and never looked back. It provides superior algorithms to Photoshop and can even handle detailed forest images. If there is movement, the results will not be perfect from the start. But Helicon also offers an intuitive touch-up workflow, which helps clean up imperfections quickly.
Helicon is not available as an extension for Photoshop. You will find it in Lightroom under “Export – Helicon Focus”. I prefer to use the DNG option, which allows me to make RAW adjustments even after stacking.
DXO PureRAW 4
The most recent Lightroom plugin I’ve started using is DxO PureRAW 4. When Lightroom released their AI Noise Reduction, it was a game changer. Suddenly I could take forest photos at ISO 800 as if they were ISO 100. Night photos captured at ISO 6400 also became possible.
With DxO PureRAW 4 you can further increase the image quality of your photos. The images look cleaner and more detailed than the results I can get with Lightroom or any other software I’ve tested. I show a comparison in the video below. You can download a 14-day free trial here.
Luminar Neo Photo Editor
Another recent addition to my editing suite is Luminar NEO*. It can be used as a standalone photo editing software or as an add-on for Photoshop and Lightroom. If used as a standalone software, you can develop your RAW photos with it before diving into the various creative editing tools contained within Luminar.
But that’s not even the end. Skylum, the company behind Luminar NEO, is continually developing new features, which it offers in the form of plugins. You can purchase them separately. They include AI sharpening, noise reduction, and HDR, among other tools.
I’m still exploring the different adjustments this software allows me to make to my image, but with every minute I spend using this software, I find new and creative ways to improve my photo editing.
Conclusion
Lightroom and Photoshop are powerful photo editing programs themselves. There is almost nothing you can’t do with the tools they provide. But there are some things you can do faster and better if you use more specialized software. The extensions I shared in this article are examples of this.
*These are affiliate links. I get a commission if you buy or book something after clicking on it.
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.