Photoshop® CS5 Bible

Appendix B. Extending Photoshop's Capabilities Through Plug-Ins

IN THIS APPENDIX

• Installing plug-ins to extend Photoshop

• Optional plug-ins from Adobe's Web site

Photoshop is extremely powerful and excellent at what it does. One of the best features of Photoshop is the ability to extend any features that don't already exist by adding more plug-ins. Lots of plug-ins are available from Adobe as well as other sources that provide specialized functionality for a variety of purposes.

Plug-ins can be installed in Photoshop using two methods. The simplest method is to copy the plug-in file into the Adobe Photoshop CS5/Plug-ins folder where Photoshop is installed.

Note

You need to restart Photoshop after installing a plug-in. Also some plug-ins require some additional steps, so make sure you read the readme file that comes with the plug-in. Also, you can disable a plug-in from being loaded by putting a ~ (tilde) character in front of the filename or the folder that contains the plug-in file. If you put a ~ in front of a folder name, all plug-ins in that folder and any subfolder are ignored.

The other way that plug-ins can be installed is to add another plug-in folder for the added plug-ins. This allows you to keep third-party plug-ins in a separate location and keep your plug-ins out of the Adobe application folder where they might get removed if you uninstall.

To add another plug-in folder, use Ctrl/

• Allow Extensions to Connect to the Internet: When this option is selected, the optional plug-ins ...