Find and install the best Adobe Premiere Pro plugins
Adobe Premiere Pro plugins can improve your editing experience and sharpen your content. Learn how to download our best picks.
If you’re using Adobe Premiere Pro, you'll have come across plugins. Let’s dig into our favorites.
We’ll discuss:
- Beauty Box
- Twixtor
- AutoPod
- Premiere Pro FX
- Mask to Transform
- OneR Insta 360
- Epidemic Sound for Premiere Pro
What are Premiere Pro plugins?
Plugins are add-ons to an existing program. Just like you can buy extra channels for a TV streaming package or add mods to a car, plugins enhance your experience. In this case, Premiere Pro plugins lend extra effects and functionality to your video editing process, making it smoother, more powerful, or just downright fun – it all depends on the plugin.
Do After Effects plugins work in Premiere Pro?
After Effects is another Adobe program, specializing in motion effects. Despite its primary function varying from Premiere Pro, the two software are often compared – but can you use After Effects plugins in Premiere Pro?
The short answer is… mostly. Plugins will often be supported by both software, but some may be exclusive to either Premiere Pro or After Effects, though. If you’d like to use an After Effects-exclusive plugin for your Premiere Pro project, you could always create the footage in After Effects and export it to Premiere Pro.
Where can you find plugins for Premiere Pro?
If you’d like to find existing Premiere Pro plugins on your device, just open Premiere Pro, load up your project, hit ‘Window’ in the menu bar, head to ‘Extensions,’ then scroll to find your desired plugin. Once you’ve found it, give it a click, and you’ll be able to use it in your project.
If you’d like to find new plugins, you can go further afield. The most obvious method is to head straight to Adobe Exchange – they’re packing hundreds of Premiere Pro plugins, free to use (most of the time!) and ready to go.
You can also install plugins via a third party. This option gives you more freedom, but doesn’t come with the guaranteed safety provided by Adobe Exchange. Luckily, Adobe provides a trusted list of third-party developers.
If you still can’t find what you’re looking for, you can always search beyond Adobe’s recommendations. As long as you’ve taken robust anti-virus measures and know a spammy link when you see one, you should be fine to (cautiously) trawl the internet in search of your perfect plugin.
How do you add plugins to Premiere Pro?
Adding plugins to Premiere Pro is super easy. If you’ve downloaded the plugin from Adobe Exchange, your plugin should already be installed and available in the ‘Extensions’ tab.
If you downloaded your plugin from a third party, installation is still pretty simple. You just need to complete the steps from the plugin’s installer, which should have been included in the initial download. Then, it’s a case of opening Premiere Pro like before, clicking on your ‘Effects’ panel, then the burger icon, and ‘Import Presets.’ This will take you to your local file explorer – find your plugin, then click ‘Open.’ When you search in the Effects panel, your plugin should now show up.
Premiere Pro plugins can help tie your footage together, giving it the extra polish or push it needs to convey your ideas. Music can also give your content that hidden sparkle, the tone you can’t quite capture through visuals alone. After all, the soundtrack can make or break your content – nail it every time with Epidemic Sound’s catalog, placing more than 50,000 tracks at your fingertips.
What are the best Premiere Pro plugins?
Now that we’ve learned what Premiere Pro plugins are and where you can find them, let’s rattle through the best Premiere Pro plugins – in our humble opinion, of course!
Beauty Box
Beauty Box is a retouching tool developed by Digital Anarchy, used by massive studios like Universal and Fox. In a nutshell, this plugin is a digital makeup brush. It helps you fix issues like glare, wonky makeup, blemishes, and more – all without making your subjects look blurry or straight-up smooth like an alien.
You can download the Beauty Box Premiere Pro plugin for free, and activate a free trial when you start. To keep using it, though, you’ll have to purchase a license, which costs $199 for lifetime access.
Twixtor
RE:Vision Effects’ Twixtor is a great tool for slowing down and speeding up video, your way. It can retime your footage by up to 160 (!) times, and calculates motion for each individual pixel in your content – can’t say it’s anything but thorough. You can download Twixtor for free, but your content will be watermarked; the full license is priced at $329.95 for lifetime access, or $595 for Twixtor Pro.
AutoPod
Editing video podcasts? AutoPod’s got the special sauce. This lovely pack of plugins features everything you need to streamline your podcast’s visuals, with multi-camera editing, jump cut editing, and a social clip creator. It’s user-friendly and as complicated as you decide, making it ideal for beginners and seasoned pros.
You can give AutoPod a try without spending a cent, as they offer a generous 30-day free trial. Once you’re done with that, it’ll set you back $29 per month.
Premiere Pro FX
You know those people at school who were just good at everything? Phantazma’s Premiere Pro FX plugin gives off those vibes. It boasts more than 10,000 effects, broken down into neat lil’ categories including transitions, text animation, motion effects, and more.
You can snag a lifetime subscription to the Premiere Pro FX extension for just $59. Unfortunately, there’s no free trial, nor is it free to download. If you can afford the one-off payment, though, it’s wild value for money.
Mask to Transform
Motion tracking is tricky business. It’s essential for most high-budget productions, and while Premiere Pro does offer automatic motion tracking for masks, it’s not been able to follow the movement of objects.
That changes with the Mask to Transform plugin for Premiere Pro. You can use this puppy to follow the movement of objects, people, text, and more, meaning that you no longer need to motion track in After Effects and dynamically link to your Premiere Pro project. You can get this plugin for just $24.90 from Adobe Exchange.
OneR Insta 360
The OneR Insta 360 Premiere Pro plugin, also known as GoPro X Reframe, gives you complete control of your GoPro footage. Whether you want to adjust motion blur, alter your lens curvature, manually change the horizon in your footage, or something completely different, this plugin’s got the goods. And best of all? It’s free to download and use.
Epidemic Sound for Premiere Pro
Not to toot our own horn, but we’ve got our own Premiere Pro plugin – and it’s a real people-pleaser. The Epidemic Sound for Premiere Pro plugin lets you use our full catalog of more than 50,000 tracks in your Premiere Pro projects, along with our state-of-the-art Soundmatch tool, integration of your personalized Epidemic Sound playlists, and more.
As long as you’re signed up to our Commercial or Enterprise Plan, you can just download the plugin and start soundtracking your projects.
So, now that we’ve gone through some of the best plugins on the market, it’s time to look at how else you can elevate your content. One of the most important elements is music. Don’t leave something as vital as your soundtrack to chance – use Epidemic Sound’s catalog to take your content to the next level.
Our catalog is high-quality, affordable, and safe. An Epidemic Sound subscription goes beyond royalty-free music, removing the headache of licensing and freeing you up to do what you do best. You can enjoy the safety of our license hand-in-hand with our massive catalog, covering just about every genre you can think of. You’ll also gain unlimited access to our advanced search functions — finding the right sound’s never been easier.
It’s better than royalty-free. It’s worry-free. Get started with Epidemic Sound below.
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