10 Best Free Photoshop Plug-ins

From Creativenerd:

One of the most under utilized aspects of Photoshop is the vast wide amounts of free Photoshop plug-ins, which you can download for free of charge. The beauty of Photoshop plug-ins are they open up so many new features to Photoshop, which allows you to use Photoshop outside of the boundaries it was developed for.

This blog post we have carefully scoured the web in search of the best free Photoshop plug-ins, and have compiled all these great plug-ins to into one blog post. All the plug-ins are compatible with Photoshop CS6.

I hope you enjoy the compilation of free Photoshop plug-ins, and would love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.

1. Perfect Effects 4 Free

Add a heavy dose of excitement or a subtle amount of elegance to your photos with Perfect Effects 4 Free. Choose from over 70 effects to enhance and stylize your images, including effects to create the popular HDR and vintage looks, textures to add depth and dimension, and borders to add a finishing touch. Instantly add any effect with a single click or combine them to create a look of your own.

2. sinedots filter

This is a great tutorial to create a great spiral effect using easy Photoshop plugin.

3. Mosaic

Mosaic makes your photos look as if they were created out of a mosaic tile. Photo-realistic depth and variable tile size and color options give this effect an infinite number of looks.

4. Guide Guide

With GuideGuide, it doesn’t have to be. Pixel accurate columns, rows, midpoints, and baselines can be created based on your document or marquee with the click of a button. Frequently used guide sets can be saved for repeat use. Grids can use multiple types of measurements. Best of all it’s free. Honestly, if you haven’t started downloading it by now, you’re probably a masochist.

5. Cut&Slice me

Use Cut&Slice me to export your assets to different devices in seconds. Improve your workflow by just naming your layers.

6. CSS3Ps

free cloud based photoshop plugin that converts your layers to CSS3.

7. Tych Panel 2

The ultimate diptych, triptych & ntych automation tool for Photoshop.

8. Filter Forge 4.0

The second stage of the beta test of Filter Forge 4.0 is now available! The new beta includes support for loop operations that provide new ways to create textures and effects – learn more and grab the beta on the Beta Page.

9. Mr Stacks

Mr. Stacks is a Photoshop script that rapidly generates storyboards, stacks, and PDF(s) for CD check-ins, client-ish presentations, and whatever else it is you do. Helping to Nail some of the most monotonous tasks in art direction.

10. Natural Media Tool Kit

NKS5 is a custom extension for Photoshop that provides the user with a versatile collection of natural media, texturing and production tools in a compact palette.

10,000 miles = 10,000 books in the Mongol Rally

10,000 miles = 10,000 books in the Mongol Rally:

Mongolia Rally. Photo by: Leon Logothetis

Leon Logothetis will be covering this year’s Mongol Rally for Matador.

THE TRUTH IS, I probably shouldn’t be here. Events happened last year that conspired to nearly rob me of my life. Inches I tell you. Inches. Things happened. Bad things. I had signed up for the famed Mongol Rally; an arduous trek across 10,000 miles of desert, treacherous mountain ranges, and inhospitable territory. All attempted in a car that only your granny would be proud of.

At the hospital. Photo by: Leon Logothetis

The aim was to drive from England to Mongolia. The reality was that I found myself lying on a hospital bed in a distant land. A broken collarbone and bruised ego in tow. Violent car crashes can do that to you. I never did reach Mongolia. My adventure ended on a Romanian road. My life, did not.
This year I’m trying again. Something inside just won’t give up. I guess I’m still chasing the sense of adventure lost on that dusty Romanian road. The sense of accomplishment. The daring. The cultures. The people. Life awaits. Adventure awaits. Mongolia awaits.
The 2012 Mongol Rally will see me visit 18 countries. Connect with hundreds of diverse people and drive thousands of miles. I’ve teamed up with Firstbook, and for every mile I drive I’ll be donating a book to an underprivileged child. Every mile is a book. Every book is a window into hope. Hope that a child will be inspired to live a full life. Hope that a child can grow up one day and yearn to see the world. Experiencing life. Experiencing adventure. Living outside of their box.

Rally car. Photo by Leon Logothetis

As I make my trek across a third of the world’s surface, I’ll be blogging and sending back videos daily. When (not if) I reach my destination of the Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar, this man’s life will be changed for the better in some small way. And hopefully the 10,000 books will have a powerful effect on 10,000 kids. Here’s to hope, my friends.
You can follow my adventure starting July 14th here at Matador Network, on Facebook, and on Twitter.

Photoshop Actions for HDR Effects

Photoshop Actions for HDR Effects:
Free HDR Photoshop Actions:

Fake HDR Photoshop Action by 2KOOL4U

Pseudo HDR by FinesseFX

HDR Effect by ALfannan8w

HDR Portrait by ALfannan8w

HDR Tools by forfie

HDR Effect 4.3 by sa-cool

Dylan’s HDR Detail Action by Toxic-Designs-Redux

HDR Action by SuperSzajs

Time-lapse video of Ho Chi Minh City in action

Time-lapse video of Ho Chi Minh City in action:

In a city of 7+ million people and nearly as many motorbikes zipping through the streets, the traffic situation in Vietnam’s largest city plays out like frantic, yet perfectly synchronized dance.

Rob Whitworth captured the frenetic energy of the city in a beautiful time-lapse video created using 10,000 RAW images.

All the web's top videos.

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80+ Time Saving and Free Photoshop Action Sets

Photoshop is a wonderful tool that not only lets you create amazing graphics but alsoautomate your work and improve your workflow. With Photoshop Actions, you can perform your repetitive tasks with a simple click that not only saves you time but helps improving your efficiency.

Photoshop actions allow you to record a sequence of commands and operationsthat you can set aside and can access afterward. They can also perform some extremely complex techniques with just a push of a button.

Here we have compiled a list of 80+ top-quality Photoshop actions to share with you, so you can expedite your design work. Before presenting our hand-picked collection of downloadable Photoshop Actions, however, we would like to offer a short explanation on how to install and create your own Photoshop Actions.

Creating Photoshop Actions

Creating Photoshop actions is very simple. All you need to do is open up the “Actions” palette and click the New Action button as seen in the picture below:

A new window pops up giving you different options for creating actions. Name the action and then place it in a set. For quick access, you can assign a shortcut to your action that will immediately activate it in Photoshop. This is a useful option to be used for those actions that you use with regularity.

Hitting the “Record” button allows you to record your desired actions by carrying out the necessary steps. The only thing that needs to be remembered here is selection sizes, saving and other specific steps will be duplicated precisely as you perform them in the action. So, you need to keep your steps as generic as possible so that they will work on the complete range of the images you want the action to apply to.

Once you’re done, hit the “Stop” button in the action menu. Your action has been recorded. Now you can hit the “Play” button if you want to perform the action on another file.

Installing Photoshop Actions

There are numbers of ways to install Photoshop actions. Dragging the downloaded actions into the ‘Actions” folder enclosed within the “Presets” folder in your Photoshop application folder is the easiest way. Note: you may need to restart Photoshop so that the installed actions can appear in the actions menu.

On the other hand, hit the little arrow on the right of the actions menu and then click the “Load Actions” option to quickly install the downloaded actions into the Photoshop.

Useful Photoshop Action Sets

Photoshop Actions – 4

Red Action

Action Contagious

AcroPano Photo Stitcher 2.1.2 Portable

AcroPano Photo Stitcher 2.1.2 Portable | 11 MB

Acropano stitch your photos into dazzling panorama fully automatically and perfectly, at the same time provides full manual control over every single parameter. You can fully control over the final result. When you take panoramic shots, you will need to make sure that all items in all photos actually fit at the same zoom level. And 25%~65% overlap on each adjacent photo usually works best for stitching.

AcroPano offers three modes for stitching:
· Horizontal Panorama: Stitches multiple horizontal photos of a view into a single wide panorama. Great for wide-angle view or representation of a physical space, vast landscapes, city skylines.
· 360 degree Panorama: Creates a 360 degree cylindrical panorama. Stitching in 360 degree puts you right in the middle with all you're surrounded by. Great for a range of mountains, a forest of trees or the fence in your own backyard.
· Vertical Panorama: Stitches multiple vertical photos of a view into a single wide panorama. Great for snapping a full picture of soaring skyscrapers, towering trees, and cascading waterfalls.

Here are some key features of "Acropano":

Intelligent photo organizing:
- Automatically organizes associated photos in the right order.

Automatic photo stitching:
- Programmatically creates panoramas in just a few mouse clicks.

Manual mode:
- Manually control stitching points on associated photos.

Supported output formats and sizes:
- Creates panoramas in JPEG (JPG), BMP, TIFF (TIF), PNG and TGA.

Multiple styles:
- AcroPano offers three Panorama Modes to suit well for presenting wide-angle view of vast landscapes, city skylines, a range of mountains, or cascading waterfalls, etc.

Home Page - www.acropano.co

Download from Filesonic

Toycamera AnalogColor 0.5.5 | Mac Os X

Toycamera AnalogColor 0.5.5 | Mac Os X | 9.7 MB

Toycamera AnalogColor is a great photo editing application. With Toycamera AnalogColor, it is very easy to transform digital images to analog-like pictures, but also lets you add a Polaroid styled Frame.

New Features – Version 0.5.5
+ Added Film strip frame
+ Added presets for “Film frame”
+ Fixed polaroid frame
(Able to export upto 2500px/2000px: Demo)
+ Added DPI setting option
-Faster than ver.0.5 (on mac)

HomePage: http://www.pentacom.jp/pentacom/toycamera_analogcolor/

filesonic.com
fileserve.com

Portable ACDSee Pro 4.0.198 Final

Portable ACDSee Pro 4.0.198 Final | 116.06 MB

Discover ACDSee Pro Photo Manager, the most powerful software platform for viewing, processing, editing, organizing and publishing your photos. ACDSee Pro is a single platform where professional photographers view, process, edit, organize, catalog, publish and archive their growing digital photo collections. With the flexibility and control offered by ACDSee Pro 4, you can manage your images the way that works best for you. No need to adapt your workflow to fit the cookie-cutter cataloging imposed by other photo applications.

ACDSee Pro is built to help you save time in all the key steps of your workflow. Each of the four modes - Manage, View, Process, Online – groups the tools that you commonly use during that particular step of your workflow. ACDSee Pro empowers you to view, process, edit, organize, catalog, publish, and archive your photo collections with precision and control.
View your RAW images with lightning-fast image previews and support for most RAW formats from DSLR cameras. Get support for IPTC core fields with XMP. Shift time stamps on multiple images at once. Compare up to four images side by side.

Known as the best workflow manager for today’s photographers, ACDSee Pro has grown to become a valuable tool for quickly processing the ever-expanding variety of RAW formats from digital camera manufacturers, especially for the new generation of DSLRs. With a distinguished pedigree as the Internet’s first and fastest image browser, ACDSee has helped photographers view, edit and share images quickly and easily for more than 15 years.

Experience ACDSee Pro 4 - the best value in photography software
• Quickly browse, organize, and find images on your computer
• Easily import photos from your camera, card reader, scanner and other devices
• View your images – from JPEG to RAW – in full size at unrivaled speeds
• Process images with dynamic, non-destructive adjustments and fine-tune at the pixel level
• Easily publish and and store images online

ACDSee Pro streamlines your workflow and increases productivity. It empowers you to view, process, edit, organize, catalog, publish, and archive your photo collections with precision and control. View your RAW images with lightning-fast image previews and support for most RAW formats from DSLR cameras. Get support for IPTC core fields with XMP. Shift time stamps on multiple images at once. Compare up to four images side by side

• Browse your collection instantly with ACDSee Pro 4. Unlike other photo applications, you don’t need to spend valuable time importing files that are already on your computer and connected devices. Simply open ACDSee Pro 4 to access your folders and files live, in real time.
• Organize files using custom categories, keywords, ratings, IPTC/EXIF/XMP metadata and more.
• Be productive right away with up front import, renaming and categorizing of your new image files from your camera and other devices.
• Quickly tag your images for further processing.
• Perform sophisticated searches to quickly find any photo, and save them for ongoing use.
• Manage over 100 different file types.
• View all your images – from JPEG to RAW – with the fastest viewing technology on the market.
• Organize files as you review them - categorize, rate, and add metadata using the Properties pane.
• Experience the combined power of ACDSee Pro 4's non-destructive image development technology and precise pixel-level editor in one seamless environment.
• Perfect the exposure, color, clarity and geometry of your photos in the Develop sub-mode
• Boost saturation without affecting skin tones with the new Vibrance slider
• Fine-tune select areas, repair pixels, and add creative effects and watermarks in the Edit sub-mode.
• Save time by globally adjusting hundreds of photos at once - including RAW files - with batch tools.
• Copy photos and folders to your free* online account with a simple drag and drop interface.
• Organize images online as easily as you do on your desktop, using a folder tree structure.
• Create password-protected albums to share with clients or public albums to showcase to the world.

New Features Include:
• Ground-breaking image processing workflow
• Convenient FTP uploader
• Free online photo sharing
• SMTP e-mail support
• Enhanced intuitive interface
• Flexible non-destructive processing presets
• Improved noise reduction
• Vibrance image processing tool
• Advanced Color image processing tool

OS : Win XP/2000/Vista/Win 7
Language : English

Home Page - http://www.acdseepro.com

Download:

filesonic
http://www.filesonic.com/file/409243171/ACDSee_Pro_4.rar

Photoshop Magazine - Aprile 2011 - N.53

Photoshop Magazine - Aprile 2011 - N.53
Italian | PDF | 86 Pag. | 62 MB

Download
http://www.filesonic.com/file/370281491/PhotoshopMagazineN03Apr2011.pdf

Portable Picasa 3.8.117.38 Multilingual

Portable Picasa 3.8.117.38 Multilingual | 10.7 MB

Picasa is a free software download from Google that helps you: * Locate and organise all the photos on your computer. * Edit and add effects to your photos with a few simple clicks. * Share your photos with others through email, prints and on the web: it’s fast, easy and free.

Take your photos further with Picasa from Google

Organise
Picasa instantly locates and organises all the pictures on your computer.

Find the pictures you forgot you had.

Picasa organises your entire collection while you watch, scanning the images on your computer and automatically sorting them by date.
Move and re-name pictures from inside Picasa.

Want to clean up messy folders and move pictures around on your computer's hard drive? Simply drag and drop pictures from one folder in Picasa to another. Picasa will make the change permanent after double-checking with you. Want to change a picture's filename from 671056398a.jpg to Lisa.jpg? In Picasa, it only takes seconds to re-name one picture or a group of pictures.
Make an album.

Use the "Albums" collection to tag your photos into quick groupings inside Picasa. Viewing and sharing the pictures you grouped under an album is easy – they make great slideshows and movies or you can email them to friends.
Add a star rating.

Give a gold star to any photo you love: it turns your favourites into visual standouts at a glance. Picasa even has a star search that reduces your entire photo collection to the best of the best in less than a second.
Keep one picture in multiple albums.

Picasa creates a new “instance” of each photo you label without taking up more space on your computer, so you can put the same picture into multiple albums.
Password-protect collections.

Have photos you want to keep to yourself? You can add passwords to any of your Picasa collections (this does not affect which pictures you and others can see on your computer’s hard drive).

Edit
Turn a grey sky into a picture-perfect day.
Basic Fixes are back – and better.

Picasa's Basic Fixes are buttons that make it fast and easy to crop, remove red eye, fix the contrast and colour, and enhance your digital pictures.
Amazing effects turn so-so pictures into works of art.

You can see how much Picasa's 12 new visual effects can improve your photos – and in seconds, not hours. Go sepia. Warmify. Make pictures pop with colour or try austere black-and-white. Try easy one-clicks or the more finely tuned sliders for better control where you want it. And of course, you can undo your changes at any step along the way.
Write captions that stay with the picture.

Picasa makes captions the way journalists do – using the IPTC standard. That means your captions are saved within their pictures and stay with them, whether you export as a web page or make a CD presentation. Picasa captions are fully editable and searchable, and you choose whether to display them or not.
Zoom. Pan. Tilt. Get the angle you intended.

So you did not get the shot? With Picasa, that is not the end of the story. Go in closer and move the focus slightly to the left. Your camera was slightly crooked? So what? Your picture is perfect anyway.
Know how to use a camera in manual mode?

Photography aficionados can now fine-tune their photos with Picasa's EXIF display. This window shows you all the camera data that is stored in a picture's original file - such as camera model, date the photo was taken, even if a flash was used. The EXIF display also has a RGB histogram, a real-time graph that shows the intensity of colours in your picture and how they change when you make edits in Picasa.

Share
The hardest part of sharing your pictures is choosing your favourites.
Gmail
Send photos via email that are a joy to receive.

Take the guesswork out of sending photos. Picasa automatically resizes and attaches pictures to email messages at sizes your friends will be able to open. Works with most email programs, including Google Mail.
Put pictures on your own site, for free.

Picasa Web Albums is the fast and easy way to put your photos on the web. Just select the photos in Picasa that you want to share and click to publish. In seconds, those photos are on your own web page, ready to share with the people you know. Check out a few things you can do with Picasa Web Albums.

If you're looking to post multiple photos onto your blog, Picasa's "BlogThis!" button does the hard work for you by automatically transferring selected photos directly to Blogger.
Make beautiful slide shows.

With Picasa, you can turn a group of photos into a presentation with one click, then share your slide show on a CD.
Move to any device or folder.

You can take your photos with you no matter how you like to carry them. Picasa works with all the newest compact flash devices.

Prints & Products
Print beautiful pictures at home with more custom sizes or order prints, gifts and books from your favourite online companies.
Printing
Custom and standard sizes are now fit to print at home.

Picasa automatically fits your pictures perfectly onto the expensive paper used by your home printer. It is finally easy to print wallets, 4×6, 5×7, full pages, more sizes and even (hallelujah!) more than one picture on a page.
Print Order
Export pictures to popular photo processing websites.

You can pick photos straight out of Picasa and upload them directly to your favourite photo finishers to order prints and other products.

Backup
Do not lose your digital memories. Safely back up your photos with Picasa 2.
Burn to CD or DVD for archive purposes.

Picasa makes it easy to protect your pictures by archiving them on a CD or DVD. Picasa even displays the pictures that have not yet been backed up to make absolutely sure you do not make mistakes with images that matter.
Give gift CDs with slide shows.

Effortlessly create slide show CDs for friends and family.
Create a network backup of your pictures.

Save to a folder on your computer, plus any device that is an external drive or disk. Moving edited pictures out of Picasa has always been as easy as clicking the Export button. Now you can also control the quality and sizes of your exported pictures. Picasa even will save photos back to any drive, including the newest flash memory cards and sticks.

Create
Enjoy your pictures in fun, creative ways – it is what photography is all about!
Turn your photos into a movie.

It is so easy to play filmmaker with your pictures. Select your best shots, then adjust the delay time, dimensions, and video compression settings. That is it – Picasa will render a movie, complete with title graphics, that you can play and share.
Make a personalised desktop picture or screensaver.

Your best pictures are now on display. Pick a favourite photo as your desktop picture or add several into your screensaver rotation. What better way to enjoy your photographic genius at your desk?
Create a poster.

Picasa can tile any picture you select, allowing you to print each part and reassemble them at poster size – up to 1,000% larger than the original.
Make picture collages.

Select a group of pictures, choose one of the beautiful templates, and Picasa will create a collage that expands your creative horizons. Picture pile it. Make a multi-exposure image. Create a contact sheet. Done? Simply save your collage to a folder, as a new desktop background or as a screensaver.

OS : Win XP/2000/Vista/Win 7
Language : Multilingual

Home Page - http://picasa.google.com

Download link:

Letitbit
http://letitbit.net/download/63822.64bb6596e6ec8b8c8c0b93d2c2e5/Picasa_Portable_3.8.117.38_Multilingual.paf.exe.html
filesonic
http://www.filesonic.com/file/144602951/Picasa_Portable_3.8.117.38_Multilingual.paf.exe

Free Bokeh Effect Vectors

Nice bokeh – points of light that are out of focus, vector set with many variants of this well known photographic blurry effect

Download here

Adobe After Effects Plugins MegaPack ISO

Adobe After Effects Plugins MegaPack ISO | 690 Mb

Great useful Plugins For Adobe After Effects.

Adobe After Effects Official WebSite: http://www.adobe.com

Download From FileSonic

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Free Cross Processing Photoshop Actions

Nice set of specific Photoshop actions. Cross-processing is photographic technique, where slide-film (E6) is processed in chemicals used for processing print film C41 or print film is processed in slide film chemicals. The result is images with increased contrast and saturation and skewed colors.



Author’s homepage: http://mutato-nomine.deviantart.com

Download here

Free Bokeh High Resolution Textures – Vol 1

High resolution bokeh textures. Resolution is amazing 3600×3600 pixels.



Author’s homepage: http://regularjane.deviantart.com

Download here

Free Dock Icon Megapack

Excellent collection of free general purpose icons. This gigantic pack includes around 200 icons with slightly shifted perspective and reflection. Collection includes: many application icons, folders and more.

Author’s homepage: http://adrenn.deviantart.com

Download here

Free Polaroid Photo Frame Generator

Great set of free Photoshop actions for easy polaroid camera style photo frame setup. Create this retro classic frame around your favorite photo in seconds.


* – Polaroid is trademark of Polaroid Corporation.

Author’s homepage: http://rawimage.deviantart.com

Download here

Free Ultimate Photoshop Brush Pack – Vol 4

Totally amazing collection of free Photoshop brushes. Brushes are compatible with PS CS and above.



Author’s homepage: http://axeraider70.deviantart.com

Download here

Free Ghost Stories Photoshop Actions

Marvelous Photoshop actions set that will definitely send shivers down your spine. If you want to achieve that cold, haunting effect, look no further.

Author’s homepage: http://elestrial.deviantart.com

Download here

Free Quantum Photoshop Brushes

Spacey Photoshop brushes with different rays of light effects and etc.



Author’s homepage: http://axeraider70.deviantart.com

Download here

Change Faces background in iPhoto '11

Another good tip !!

Ever disliked the default Faces background in iPhoto? Ever thought it was distracting? Then this is for you.

First, navigate to:

/Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/

and look for a file named 'people-cork.png.' This is the background for Faces in iPhoto. Simply replace this with a new background of your choice. However, it seems like doing this operation requires system authentication. So, what you should do is make a copy of the original image, then delete it from the Resources folder. Then, copy the new image in, authenticating in the process. Remember to keep the old image just in case you wish to revert back later.

A good place to find backgrounds is surprisingly in Apple's Mail Stationary. Simply go to:

/Library/Application Support/Apple/Mail/Stationary

If you hit 'Show Package Contents' on the stationary nested in those folders, you can actually find many great backgrounds. Simply name it 'people-cork' (with a format of PNG).