With an amazing number of plugins, you can fully utilize GIMP and push your creative efforts to new heights. With a huge collection of plugins, GIMP—the clear leader in free image editing—becomes an unstoppable force. With the help of these fantastic plugins, you can easily improve your artwork, organize your process, and let your creativity run wild like never before. The GIMP plugins are the secret weapons in your creative armory, offering anything from captivating filters that give your photographs life to clever tools that make difficult jobs simple. Enter a world of limitless creative possibilities where each click inspires a new wave of inspiration, and each plugin introduces a fresh level of artistic ability.
1. DarkTable
DarkTable and RawTherapee (see below), which both work as independent programs as well as integrate quite neatly as GIMP plugins, let you process raw files and make non-destructive adjustments to photographs.
There are countless satisfied customers of Darktable, a free alternative to Lightroom (see: Darktable vs Lightroom). We advise using it if you're new to image processing since, despite being a little less detailed in some areas, including color correction, its user interface makes it more approachable, especially for those who are just getting started.
DarkTable is a great alternative to Adobe Camera Raw, just as GIMP is a great choice over Photoshop.
2. RawTherapee
DarkTable and RawTherapee (see below), which both work as independent programs as well, integrate quite neatly as GIMP plugins and let you process raw files and make non-destructive adjustments to photographs.
There are countless satisfied customers of Darktable, a free alternative to Lightroom (see: Darktable vs Lightroom). We advise using it if you're new to image processing since, despite being a little less detailed in some areas, including color correction, its user interface makes it more approachable, especially for those who are just getting started.
DarkTable is a superb substitute for Adobe Camera Raw, just as GIMP is a great choice over Photoshop.
3. G’MIC
One of the best-known GIMP plugins is GREYC's Magic for Image Computing.
In essence, it's a collection of more than 500 filters, from film simulations to image warping, that can be used to alter your photographs.
It's important to note that these are effective and highly varied ways to manipulate your photographs, not Instagram-style filters. Along with curves, color balance, and HSL sliders, metallic effects and colorful blobs are also available.You can upload an image to this site and experiment with the filters if you'd like.
4. Resynthesizer
One of GIMP's oldest and most important plugins is Resynthesizer. It offers several tools made especially for using textures. Under the Enhance menu, choose Heal Selection to access the most crucial section.
The content-aware Fill tool in Photoshop is a feature that GIMP does not have, but this GIMP Heal Selection plugin does. You can easily delete unwanted elements from a photo using this tool.
Heal Selection uses surrounding content from your image's background to completely blend in the defect or intrusion that was removed. Similar to Photoshop, if you, for instance, remove something from the sky, more sky will automatically replace the space. For this reason, we are unable to function without this GIMP Photoshop plugin.
5. Hugin
Hugin is the GIMP extension you need if you need to combine several photos to make a panoramic. It's easy to get started; just load your photographs, choose a few areas on each where they have things in common, and the software will combine them. Additionally, it will assist you in making up for uneven exposures and angles.
Hugin is a stand-alone application that runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
6. Duplicate To Another Image
It copies a selection into another file. Couldn't GIMP do this already? Yes, but not really well. The Duplicate to Another Image plugin enables you to duplicate a selection while retaining the object in its original location onto a new image scaled to match your original.
This makes it simple to swiftly and elegantly change the backdrop of an image. Additionally, you can copy your pick to a new image and resize it. As an alternative, you can even copy the object to another open image on your computer.
7. Wavelet Decompose
The process of skin retouching is essential to portrait photography. If you're an expert in this sector, Wavelet Decompose is the greatest plugin for GIMP.
The plugin makes use of a sophisticated frequency separation technique. The image is divided into several levels, each of which has a different collection of information. You may choose precisely which details you want to smooth and which to maintain thanks to this.
Sounds challenging? Theoretically, yes, but in practice, no. Use the smooth and blur tools to make your subject's skin glow after loading the plugin.
8. Nik Collection
GIMP filters, the Nik Collection, a professional-grade collection of picture editing tools, and other incredibly helpful upgrades. It gives you access to professional-level color filters, HDR effects, sharpening, and noise reduction. If it's so fantastic, you might be asking why we saved it for last on the list. There are primarily two causes for that.
First of all, the Nik Collection's free version is no longer formally accessible. If you already have it installed on your PC, you can set it up and download it again from The Internet Archive. Second, even now, getting it to work requires you to jump through a few hoops. You can be sure it will be worthwhile.
9. Beautify
By using a variety of changes and impacts, the Beautify plugin is meant to improve the look of photos.
The Beautify plugin for GIMP adds a new menu item or toolbar button to access its functions after installation and activation. The plugin provides many options for improving images, including:
Automatic Color Correction: The plugin analyzes the image and modifies the color levels to enhance contrast and overall color balance.
Sharpening and denoising features are included in the Beautify plugin, which enhance the image's clarity and sharpness. Additionally, it can lessen image noise, minimizing pixelated or grainy artifacts.
The strength of the colors in the image is controlled by the settings for vibrance and saturation. Colors can become more bright by increasing saturation, while vibrance can be changed to improve.
10. Palette Generator
You can use the "Palette Generator" plugin in GIMP to automatically generate a color palette from an image. It examines the colors in the image and produces a palette of hues that may be used for a variety of tasks, including developing websites, producing digital art, and applying color schemes to your projects.
A useful tool for quickly constructing color palettes based on the colors found in an image is the "Palette Generator" plugin in GIMP. It makes it simpler to maintain visual coherence in your designs because it saves you the time and work of manually choosing and generating color schemes.