18 Best GIMP Plugins + Installation Guide
Find out the 18 best GIMP Plugins of the year, to take your image editing to the next level. Plus, steps for how to find, install and use them all!
GIMP | Learn | Photography Guides | By Andy Day
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While GIMP is by far the best free alternative to Photoshop, there are ways to give it even greater functionality, and that’s where plugins come in.
Plugins often improve your workflow, introducing elements that are tricky to implement or perhaps even adding completely new features to GIMP that previously weren’t possible.
Unfortunately, the GIMP registry is no longer maintained which means that even finding plugins can be a bit of a challenge. There are quite a few of them out there — it’s just a case of figuring out which ones are best and how to get them.
This article is intended to help you track down the perfect plugins and make the most of them, bringing more potential to your favourite piece of open-source software.
(See also: best GIMP alternatives.)
Where are GIMP Plugins found?
Scripts Folder in Mac File Manager
GIMP plugins don’t have a single repository online, so Google will be your friend if you need to go searching. Software developers upload their own projects and try to keep them functional, but some become out of date and even disappear completely.
As for where GIMP Plugins are found on your computer:
Mac
System-wide script-fu scripts are stored in /Applications/GIMP.app/Contents/Resources/share/gimp/2.0/scripts/. Executable and python plugins are located in /Applications/GIMP.app/Contents/Resources/lib/gimp/2.0/plug-ins/
User-private plugins are stored under $HOME/Library/Application Support/GIMP/2.8/plug-ins/.
Windows
Go to the folder GIMP is installed in (usually somewhere in Program Files). Once in the GIMP main folder navigate to lib\gimp\*version*\ where as *version* represents the version of Gimp. Then double click the “plug-ins” folder.
Linux
Look for a hidden folder: $HOME/.gimp-*.* (where you should replace $HOME with path to your home catalogue and gimp-*.* with the version you use.
How to Install GIMP Plugins
GIMP plugins come in two flavours: those which have been packaged nicely and will install themselves automatically, and those which require a manual process. Here’s how each of them works.
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Automatic Method
If you’re a Windows user, be grateful: finding packaged GIMP plugins for Mac and Linux is a tough task.
Once you’ve located and downloaded the file, simply double click and the plugin will install itself as if it were a standalone piece of software. Follow the instructions and you’re done.
Whatever your operating system, make sure that you download these self-installing files from reputable locations, and it’s worth making sure that your antivirus software is up to date in case of any nasties.
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Manual Method
Most GIMP plugins will come compressed into a .zip file that you can download. Your first step will be to unpack this file. Saving the unzipped files to the desktop will be fine.
It then gets a little more complicated as we need to get those files into the right directory so that GIMP can find them.
The unzipped files will either be “PY” or “SCM” which you can determine by looking at the file extension or viewing under “File Type”. Make note of which type they are as this will determine where they need to go!
1. Go to Preferences and scroll down to Folders. You may need to expand Folders.
2. If your files are PY type, scroll down and click on Plugins. If your files are SCM type, scroll down and click on Scripts.
3. You will see two folders. Click on the one that begins with “Users”.
4. Click on the “Show file location in the file manager” button in the top right-hand corner of the dialogue.
5. Move your unzipped files to this folder.
6. Restart GIMP.
Restarting GIMP will prompt it to load the plugins and you should be good to go.
18 Best GIMP Plugins
GIMP plugins can be quite varied, with a few classics having disappeared over the years. Happily, these have been replaced by some truly impressive pieces of software that are ensuring that GIMP remains a viable alternative to Photoshop, Lightroom and Luminar when it comes to image processing.
With the latest version 2.1, Gimp can even use some Photoshop plugins.
1. DarkTable
While they both also function as standalone software, both DarkTable and RawTherapee (see below) work relatively seamlessly as GIMP plugins, allowing you to process raw files and make non-destructive changes to images.
Darktable is a free alternative to Lightroom with legions of happy users (see: Darktable vs Lightroom). It’s our recommendation if you’re new to processing images as, while a little less detailed when it comes to certain aspects such as colour correction, its interface makes it more accessible, especially for those who are starting out.
Just as GIMP is a fantastic choice over Photoshop, DarkTable is a solid choice as an alternative to Adobe Camera Raw (see guide).
2. RawTherapee
RawTherapee isn’t quite as user-friendly as DarkTable and also lacks some of its masking functionality, but it more than makes up for it elsewhere.
As with DarkTable, it will allow you to do non-destructive image editing from within GIMP, creating a workflow that allows you to process and edit raw files.
The learning curve will be significantly steeper but the tone mapping and high dynamic range (HDR) functionality are powerful tools.
3. G’MIC
GREYC’s Magic for Image Computing is probably one of the most popular plugins for GIMP.
Essentially, it’s a collection of more than 500 filters that can be used to edit your photographs, ranging from film emulations to the ability to warp your images.
It’s worth noting, these are not Instagram-style filters; rather, these are powerful and incredibly diverse means of manipulating your images. In among HSL sliders, color balance, and curves, you’ll also find metallic looks and colorful blobs.
If you want to test out some of the filters, you can upload an image here and have a play.
4. Resynthesizer
If you’ve ever been jealous of Photoshop’s Content Aware Fill tool, be jealous no longer. Resynthesizer will save you from working laboriously with the clone tool, intelligently deciding how to fill a selection from what surrounds it.
5. Wavelet Decompose
If you’re keen to start retouching skin, Wavelet Decompose Script-Fu uses frequency separation to create layers containing different levels of detail.
It makes a complex process into something relatively straightforward and the level of control makes it one of the most powerful GIMP plugins for retouching an image.
6. Hugin
This plugin for GIMP is panorama stitching made easy. Simply load in your images, tell the plugin how you want them connected, and let it do the rest.
7. Duplicate To Another Image
One of the more literal titles for a plugin, Duplicate To Another Image massively simplifies the workflow in GIMP, making it very useful while also packing in a few other handy features to make your life even easier.
8. GimpHelp.org Script Bundle
This is a useful batch of GIMP scripts that’s updated over time, offering you simple tools like those to fade edges or add a picture frame.
It’s always worth checking which version of GIMP you’re running against the version that the scripts are optimised for, otherwise you might run into difficulties.
9. Nik Collection
Unfortunately, the NIK Collection is no longer active but happily the developers decided to make their filters freely available to everyone back in 2016.
These plugins and scripts give you powerful tools, including color correction, retouching and creative effects.
10. BIMP Batch Image Manipulation Plugin
Another gloriously literal plugin that allows you to resize, crop, rotate, watermark large numbers of image files in one go. Batch processing images could save you hours.
11. Beautify
Simple but effective, Beautify is a series of sliders that allows you to add beautifying filters to photographs of faces. If you need a quick and easy means of tweaking your selfies, it’s an essential GIMP plugin.
12. Lensfun
Lensfun draws on an extensive library of lens profiles, giving you the ability to apply lens corrections to your images and allowing you to fix vignetting, chromatic aberration, and distortion.
This GIMP plugin supports an extensive range of lenses. You can check out the full list by clicking here.
13. Refocus
If you’re not able to go back in time and reshoot that slightly out of focus photograph, fear not: Refocus will give it a pretty good shot.
This GIMP plugin throws some maths at your blurry shot and will produce some decent results.
14. Elsamuko’s Filters
This image manipulation tool offers Instagram-style presets, and a rather eclectic collection at that, mixing some vintage feels alongside some slightly more bizarre offerings.
15. Palette Generator
For designers looking to put together a color scheme, Palette Generator offers you a convenient alternative to using an online tool.
16. Liquid Rescale
Photoshop’s content-aware scaling tool is a valuable means of image manipulation, and GIMP can gain this functionality through the ingenious Liquid Rescale plugin.
17. FX Foundry
FX Foundry puts an entire new menu into GIMP, opening up access to an extensive list of image editing tools and effects.
18. Save For Web
With Save For Web, prepping files quickly for upload to the web is a simple series of clicks, making this another one of those GIMP plugins that’s a huge time-saver.
It offers jpeg, png and gif formats, and allowing you to choose the level of compression.
How to Use GIMP Plugins
After you’ve installed your GIMP plugin, you may be confused about how to actually use it.
Different GIMP plugins are accessed and run in different ways. Some may show up under the Filters menu; others can be accessed by options in the Layers menu or Image menu, and others appear under a menu called Script-Fu.
Others, like FX Foundary listed above, add an entirely new menu item to the top of GIMP.
Because of this variability, finding your way around each new GIMP plugin can be a little bit of a learning and exploring process.
The good news is that, once you’ve found how to access them, many of the best GIMP plugins are easy and intuitive to use. For more complex processes or if you run into issues, try searching for the plugin’s help and support documentation online.
Gimp Plugins FAQs
What are GIMP plugins?
GIMP plugins are small, add-on pieces of software that expand the functionality of GIMP. For example, they might allow you to apply filters, adjust image quality, process raw images, etc.
How do I add plugins to GIMP?
Some plugins come as software packages that install automatically. Others require you to install them manually by moving unzipped files to a specific location. For the precise steps, see the instructions above.
Can GIMP use Photoshop plugins?
Yes – the latest version of GIMP can run a range of Photoshop plugins. You may need to check the compatibility of individual plugins, however, as not all will work 100%.
Final Words
Plugins for GIMP can completely transform your experience of the software, opening up new possibilities and potentially making it a viable competitor with Photoshop and, more recently, Lightroom and Adobe Camera RAW.
If you have any questions or comments, or think that there’s a plugin that we’ve missed, be sure to leave a comment below.
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Andy Day is a British photographer and writing, living and working in France, specialising in adventure, travel, architectural and landscape photography.
25 Comments
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👋 WELCOME TO SHOTKIT!
🔥 Popular NOW:
The Save for Web Plugin is no more. Take it off of your list.
Mackenzie
Following up on Richard’s question (Richard on September 30, 2021 at 7:16 pm), is there a way to make the linux/c refocus plugin compatible for Windows?
Refocus plugins, typically used in image editing software, are often designed specifically for certain operating systems. Therefore, it may not be possible to directly make a Linux/C refocus plugin compatible with Windows without modification or recompilation.
However, if you have access to the source code of the refocus plugin, you can attempt to compile it for the Windows platform. This process involves adapting the code to be compatible with Windows libraries and APIs.
Perhaps a job for a specialist.
If these very old Gimp plugins are the best of 2023, then Gimp is in trouble. Not much being devloped or supported.
Many of these are not compatible with current version of GIMP 2.99.
The Palette Generator doesn’t work in 2.10.32. It comes up as the texture generator instead. I believe the creator placed 2 files under the same name by mistake and gimp is only looking for the texture generator.
File–>Texture Generator is only for the texture generator. It doesn’t come up for the palette generator at all.
Also, Save for Web doesn’t come up in Gimp 2.10.32 either.
I found Export for Web at gimp-forum.net/Thread-save-for-web–3557. It works! Thank you so much.
Similarly, I installed the G´MIC pack you listed, very nice, and I would like to contribute with the Photocopy Effect found at docs.gimp.org/2.6/en/plug-in-photocopy.html.
This link is very helpful with downloads, BUT … after running the VirusTotal scan I was prevented from installing the addons: codecpack.co/download/GIMP.html.
Great stuff, but you are missing the https://www.facebook.com/GIMPXtender/ page on Facebook!
Please let the description of the plugin tell us what it does – not what other app or feature it resembles.
It is like telling someone who has just had their first drivers license theory lesson that this is just like driving a Honda Civic. Or telling someone that a pear is just like an apple, that it comes in all the same color variants, but just with a slightly different shape and taste. That is not helpful to anyone.
BULL, it IS helpful!!! 🙄 It might take them a whole paragraph to explain what a program does, but if they say (This is a great alternative to “Lightroom” or “Illustrator”).. BOOM – I get it INSTANTLY and pretty much know what it does. THEN they can go into a few specifics of some of the differences & comparisons between the two. If someone is SO new that they need more than that, then they should start doing research on the comparison programs or on Wikipedia.
NOBODY has the time to handhold people from (This is a paintbrush…. this is a Selection tool) – and here’s what they do. Watch some Youtube tutorials and spend time on Adobe’s website and get yourself up to speed… THEN you can research alternative software. 🤗
None of this works on my iMac. I don’t see anything under GLIMP.COM in Applications at all. Nothing there. In GLIMP I click on Peferences and navigate to Folders and there’s nothing there but a couple of what are apparently temp folders. It does not take me to a list that includes plug-ins. This is my second attempt to use what seems like a great program and the second dead-end. What am I not getting (other than that this doesn’t really support Mac osx)?
Perhaps you aren’t finding it because the name is *not* GLIMP, but GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program).
Thanks for the list of plugins. I’m really looking to move over from Photoshop to Gimp due to the scratch disk drain Adobe puts on the machine. I do have a question, maybe unrelated to this post, but do you know if there is a ‘quick export feature’?
For example, Photoshop has quick export to png and jpeg. Can this be done with Gimp where you right-click the layer and only export that layer?
Trying to install refocu plugin for winows. I can get as far as unpacking the tar.gz file what next?
Hi Hi.. tar.gz is Linux!
Hi – let’s take Resynthsizer or g’mic
I don’t get it…. I have no clue how to install those.
g’mic: i copied them into
C:\PortableApps\PortableApps\GIMPPortable\Data\.gimp\plug-ins\gmic_gimp_qt
and the are somehow recognised by GIMp, but in grey, not executable.
As for Resynthsizer— I can not even understand what to download and whether I must compile first Flatpak and then Resynthesizer.
Sorry, I am a musician, not an IT guy.
But it CAN’T be so complicated
Open GIMP – Edit – Preferences – Folders
Add where ever your plus are to the folder use the + icon find it than use the + icon to add it
Hello,
It looks like aliens are now involved in our software industry and are trying so hard to explain it just with an Extra-Terrestrial mindset, they still need some more time to understand human.
I need a pain killer for my headache.
My God.
This helped me a lot. Thank you!
Some links dont work, some plug ins are not really plug ins, the Beautify ‘plug in’ is a series of Python? files that might work on windows but instructions only show unix install. which is a shame because the examples look really good. Perhaps the Dev’s and the Author of any reviews could just say at the start ‘its only unix’ because otherwise its like queueing for a funfare ride for hours then being told you can’t ride!
Hi and thanks for raising your concerns. I checked over the links on the page and found them all to be loading correctly. Are you able to point the specific links that don’t work on our page? That way we can identify the problem and fix it quickly. As for the Beautify plugin, you can raise any concerns with the way the software is presented to the developer or via the developer’s Issues forum page here – https://github.com/hejiann/beautify/issues. Best of luck. Cheers. G
The link for G’MIC is inactive. Use https://gmic.eu/ It worked for me.
Hi A.J.
Thanks for bringing that to our attention. I have updated the link and it should all be good from here.
Have a great day.
G
I want to note that most of the instructions provided are out of date to the point where it is problematic asking people to use them. Especially downloading from largely random sites you have chosen. With GIMP 2.10+ (no, it is *not* 2.1), The Plugin registry has been retired in favor of a built in browser. The project hopes to add download funcitonality to this in the future.
– G’MIC Filters are included by default, there is no need to install them separately.
– “Resynthesizer” is Under Filters -> Enhance -> Heal Selection, it does require a 64 Bit installation of GIMP and may require Python
For Linux users nearly all of this is in their repsoritories and only requires selecting GIMP from their Software Center or similar tool.
Working Save for Web plugin can be found here. Worked for me.
https://www.gimp-forum.net/Thread-save-for-web–3557
Hi Andy Day,
das Plugin Save for Web gibt es nicht mehr. Hast du einen Tipp für ein anderes?
Beste Grüße
Frank