Best free Photoshop plugins like Alien Skin Eye Candy?

[dennis_denko]

Hi,

I've used Alien Skin's Eye Candy alot over the years - Are there any free alternatives that's similar to that plugin?

Also which free plugins do you like for Photoshop? I have Photoshop CC 2018.

I'm also looking for plugins for photographers - for tuning and make pictures "look better".

Thank you!

[Trevor.Dennis]

Hmmm..  The catchword here is 'free'.  Eye Candy 7 is my favourite plug-in, but it wasn't free. 

NIK comes to mind.  I don't think it is directly compatible with CC 2018, but there are claims to workarounds out there.  It's Silver Efex is world class, and the best B&W conversion tool bar any according to photographers I know.

ON1 Effects 10.5 – ON1   is similar to NIK and free.  I have tried it and found I preferred the Topaz plugins that I already owned, but they are not free.

There some very useful free extensions Creative Cloud

These are what I have installed at the moment

Space Equal was written by Chuck Uebele who is a regular poster here.  It works like the Move > Align tools, but on the space between objects rather than centers or left or right edges.  It's a very useful tool, and one that used to be available on Trevor Morris's Dmonzon Tools before Adobe moved from Flash to HTML5.

Paper Texture Pro, sometimes associated with Russell Brown, has to be the best Photoshop texture tool available. 

AFAICT  Interactive Luminosity Masks works as well as the Tony Kuyper version, but I think Tony's is not free.

Other than that, I can't think of any more free plugins that I would bother to install. I use Eye Candy most, followed by ProDigital's Starfilter Pro 4, and some of the Topaz plugins like Adjust and Simplify.  The Flaming Pear plugins are old and clunky with terrible UIs, but if you can put up with that, they produce nice effects.  I use the three Space Bundle plugins and Flood 2.

I bought Filter Forge a year or so ago, and was thinking it was not that useful, but we were discussing plugins yesterday (post #32 in this thread) and I decided it was better than I'd thought.  I might even pay to upgrade from v6 to v7.

So what are you using now, and what sort of things do you use plug-ins for?

[WILDCAT54]

The Nik Collection is a must!

Google Nik Collection

[aswathie24629332]

Agreeing with Trevor.Dennis on his choices. From your question I'm not sure which type of  plugin features or extension you are looking for.So,here I would like add the details of a useful article about " Free photoshop plugins", Check: 43 best free photoshop plugins

[Trevor.Dennis]

I'm bumping this thread because Alien Skin just sent out yet another update for its Exposure software — this time version X6.  I've writen to them at least twice over the years urging them to update Eye Candy 7, but there is obviously a lot more money in photo tweaking plugins than illustration aids.  As far as I know, there is still nothing else quite like Eye Candy 7. 

I've also writen to Flaming Pear asking if they can at least update the UI of plugins like Flood and the three Space Bundle plugins, but you don't even get a reply from Flaming Pear so I think they have become bored with coding for Photoshop.  I'd gladly pay for new versions of their plugins.  I'd also pay serious money for modern versions of the old Kai Power Tools plugins.  By heck they were good.

I am not sure if we mentioned the Auto-fx plugins when their thread first came out.  They are pushing something called GRFX now, that looks like some of the Topaz efects, at a discounted $149.  I can't see any of the old titles like Lighting fx that used to do great mist and light rays.  I had an old version that stopped working ages ago.  

I also can't see mention of our Noel Carboni's Star Filter Pro 4 on this page.  I use it a lot because it works so well, and it has an outstanding UI.  As good as any third party Photoshop software I've come across.  Noel works for Adobe now, so good on him.

So if you know anything remotely like Eye Candy 7 not mentioned here, I would dearly like to hear about it.  I have Filter Forge 8 which is OK, but not well structured IMO.  It has a zillion effects, and you might never find what you are looking for without knowing the right search criteria.

Any more?

[davescm]

+1 on Noel's Star Filter Pro. I only use it occasionally but when I need it it is spot on.

Dave