Professional Photoshop plugins and apps you can try for free

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For some reason most software companies make their software trials crippled. Usually the save or export commands are disabled, or they add watermarks to the images you’ve created. Although that’s not a major issue, it would be much better if all demos (or trials) had all their functions enabled so you can experience in full glory how the software behaves in your real life workflow.

This list gathers a handful of plugins and apps that offer a fully functional demo of the product, without any limitations whatsoever, for a period between 7 and 30 days.

Pro tip: If you run out of time, you can always contact the software publisher to extend the trial period. In my experience, all companies are willing to give you more days to try their software.

#1 Adobe Creative Cloud

Creative Cloud is a collection of 20+ desktop and mobile apps and services for photography, design, video, web, UX, and more. Now you can take your ideas to new places with Photoshop on the iPad, draw and paint with Adobe Fresco, and design for 3D and AR. Join our global creative community — and make something better together. Adobe Creative Cloud gives you the world’s best creative apps and services so you can make anything you can imagine, wherever you’re inspired.

Try Creative Cloud for 7 days here...

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#2 ON1 Photo Raw

The Only All-in-One Photo Editor for Today's Photographer. The new ON1 Photo RAW is the hassle-free professional photo organizer, raw processor, layered editor, and effects app. It's perfect for those seeking an ultra-convenient all-in-one photo editing solution to produce high quality results at a tremendous value.

Creators want to create and not spend all of their time learning how to use editing tools. Photo RAW is like having Lightroom & Photoshop under one roof. It comes with the tools you need for compositing, hundreds of the hottest presets and filters built-in, and world-class masking tools to make your life easy.

Try ON1 Photo Raw for 14 days here...

#3 ON1 Effects

We've curated hundreds of the most popular looks and styles seen throughout the industry. With ON1 Effects, you get professional results in seconds without having to do any complex edits. Our team of experts curated the trendiest looks with amazing new one-click presets. ON1 Effects 2021 works on Mac and Windows and can be used as a standalone application or as a plugin to Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop, Capture One, Affinity Photo, and Corel Paint Shop Pro.

Try ON1 Effects free for 14 days...

#6 ON1 HDR

ON1 HDR creates flawless, natural HDR photos, that combine the highlight and shadow details from a bracket of exposures, in the blink of an eye. You can control the movement, such as clouds and running water with a live preview. Then, perfect your HDR photos with powerful tools and presets that showcase your creativity. ON1 HDR works as both a standalone and a plugin for Lightroom® Classic CC.

Try ON1 HDR for 14 days...

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#7 Filter Forge

Filter Forge is a high-end plugin for Adobe Photoshop allowing computer artists to build their own filters. The key features of Filter Forge include the filter editor and a free online library of user-created filters, currently containing more than 13,300 filters.

All filters are adjustable, resolution-independent, support real-world HDRI lighting, and most of them can be seamlessly tiled. Also, filters can automatically generate diffuse, specular, bump, and normal maps, which are essential for 3D-model building. All filters are built in a visual node-based environment allowing users to connect familiar operations, such as blurs, gradients, color adjustments, distortions, or blending, into a network to combine their effects.

Try FIlter Forge for 30 days...

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