6 Comments

Best Free Paint Shop Pro Plugins

Written by:  • Edited by: Rhonda Callow
Updated Apr 16, 2010 • Related Guides: Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo | Windows

Looking for new ways to express your creativity with Paint Shop Pro? Try out some of these free plugins that can be downloaded, installed, and ready to use in minutes.

Paint Shop Pro Plugins

Accessing Plugins in Paint Shop Pro
click to enlarge
If you want to extend the photo editing capabilities of Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 even further, there are a considerable number of plugins available for download, both free and commercial. These plugins cover a breadth of functions including applying special effects to images, getting rid of excess noise, and automating repetitive editing sequences.

Here, we’ll take a look at some of the best Paint Shop Pro plugins that are completely free and require nothing from you except download and installation. If this is the first time you’ve added a plugin to Paint Shop Pro and you have questions about how to load the application for general use, see the article Installing Paint Shop Pro Third-Party Plugins.

(Click on any image to enlarge.)

Also, check out what's new in PaintShop Photo Pro X3.

AmphiSoft Photo Tinter
Rating Excellent

AmphiSoft Photo Tinter is a nice addition for those who spend a lot of time adjusting color tones in their digital photos. The feature that

AmphiSoft Photo Tinter
click to enlarge
makes this plugin particularly useful is that it allows you to extract tone profiles from one image and apply them to another. Additionally, several profiles come bundled with the application, ready to be applied to existing photos.

The Photo Tinter plugin can also be used with Photoshop and several other image editors in the Windows environment.

Harry’s Filters 3
Rating Excellent

Most free plugins that provide special image effects aren’t very comprehensive and usually only focus on one or two specific functions. However, Harry’s Filters 3 contains almost 70 different effects and even includes the functionality to let you create your own new effects and save them as presets within the plugin interface.

Harry's Filters
click to enlarge

Even though Harry’s Filters 3 is a fairly lightweight application, its power rivals that of many commercial plugins. It has a very intuitive user interface and includes a basic help file explaining the function of each available setting. However, the best way to see what each setting does is to play around with the sliders, and see how the preview image is affected by the modifications.

3D Shadow
Rating Excellent

3D Shadow
click to enlarge
Although Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 has an excellent tool that can be used to create drop shadows for objects, it can take awhile to play around with the settings to find the exact look that you want to achieve. This process is made a lot easier with Lokas Software’s 3D Shadow plugin.

This plugin’s intuitive user interface includes a large preview window that is updated continuously as changes to the shadow effect are made. Several preset configurations come bundled with 3D Shadow, and you can even create and save your own customized settings for later use in other projects.

Flaming Pear Freebies Collection
Rating Good

Flaming Pear
click to enlarge
In addition to their commercial products, Flaming Pear also has a free plugin pack for Paint Shop Pro users. While the plugins in this group don’t offer the customization options found in many other selections, they do provide some very interesting effects by modifying color hues or brightness and by applying special warp settings.

Unfortunately, the plugins in this collection don’t have an option to let you preview changes before they are made to the digital photo, but that’s what the Undo button is for, right? They’re still well worth downloading and testing out on your images. Just remember, as you are testing you may want to take notes about what each plugin does as there isn’t a whole lot of documentation on this set.

Xero Graphics Free Plugins
Rating Excellent

Another large collection of free image effects can be found at Xero Graphics. Although there are over 40 different filters available here, they are packaged in bundles so you can download and install several at a time.

Xero Graphics Free Plugins
click to enlarge

Each plugin has a preview page on the site so you can get an idea of its function before trying it out for yourself. Some of my favorites from this collection are Mistifier, which produces a soft haze-like effect, and Emphasis, which allows you to emphasize particular colors in a photo.

Next: Continue on to page 2 for more high-quality free plugins compatible with Paint Shop Pro.

Showing page 1 of 2
1
We Also Recommend...

Comments

Showing all 6 comments
 
Wendy Nov 18, 2011 5:12 PM
RE: Best Free Paint Shop Pro Plugins
Love these Graphics I had no trouble with them in x2 it didn't seem any different then the other plug ins I have downloaded so I don't know why you wouldn't be able to download them
Michele McDonough Aug 16, 2011 11:25 AM
RE: Solidify Plugin
Hi Jennifer -- Have you updated PSP X3 to the latest patch? I know there were some troubles with plugins with earlier patches.
Jennifer Aug 16, 2011 10:56 AM
Solidify Plugin
I've been using the Solidify Plugin for ages. Just upgraded to PSP X3, and it crashes the program. Worked fine in X2. Anyone have any thoughts?
storm Dec 19, 2010 8:45 PM
xero graphics
I have paint shop pro ultimate x2- It says that xero graphics is unsupported. I've tried downloading several times and never have been able to get them to work.
Michele McDonough Apr 15, 2010 10:17 PM
Topaz DeJPEG
At the time that this list was created, Topaz did offer a free version of DeJPEG - it looks like that version is no longer available. Thanks for the heads up so that I can update the list.
Richard Apr 15, 2010 3:07 PM
These are not free
You said Topaz DeJpeg was free? When you click on the link you provide you can clearly see that you have to part with £30!!!!!

Do you even bother to research these things or are you downloading illegal torrent files?
 
blog comments powered by Disqus
Digital Photography
FEATURED AUTHORS
xanadu324 Rose Smith Rhonda Callow LogicSmith
Alex Roe Karsun William Springer Bill Fulks
Most Popular Articles
Email to a friend