The further you get into using Photoshop, the more you begin to wonder how you can save some time and speed up your workflow. Photoshop has a ton of built in tools, but there are plenty of plugins and extensions, both paid and free, that will make your life as a designer or developer easier. Here is a list of the best Photoshop plugins and extensions for designers and developers, along with a short description of what they each do. If you have some favorites of your own, leave them in the comments and we'll check them out. SpecKing SpecKing is a VERY popular plugin for developers. That's because it's arguably the best way to spec your designs. You can easily add measurements in one click for size, margins, and even font properties.

The plugin analyses your image and sets the quality intelligently. Worry-free color management Images are converted to sRGB for maximum compatibility. Whether you use color profiles or not – it just works. What's New in Version 2.3.0: - Added CC 2015 support. - Added JPEG support to the Photoshop plugin. System Requirements: - OS X 10.8.

It works not only with PSD files, but flat images as well. There's also some video demonstrations and tutorials on the product page. GuideGuide GuideGuide makes the built in Photoshop guide tools look foolish. This extension allows you to make pixel accurate columns, rows, midpoints, and baselines based on your document or selection with the click of a button.

No more dragging and snapping from the rulers. The best part is that it's free. TinyPNG TinyPNG uses smart lossy compression techniques to reduce the file size of your PNG files with any visible loss in quality.

It's available as a free online tool, or as a paid Photoshop plugin. I use TinyPNG EVERY time I save PNG files for the web. It can reduce the file size by 70-80%, which is huge when it comes to server bandwidth. CSS3Ps Photoshop layer styles are a great way to style text and buttons for the web. Most of the included effects can be reproduced using nothing but modern CSS, but coding things by hand isn't nearly as easy or fun. CSS3Ps lets you automatically converts layer styles, plus a few extras, into CSS code. Design in Photoshop and deploy to the web, simply by copying and pasting the code.

You can use CSS3Ps as a cloud-based service, or free download. Makes it possible to create typography-based illustrations automatically. You can choose your source image, your tpeface, font size, and a whole lot more. It's very easy to use and creates effects that would take hours to make by hand.

Layrs Control Layrs Control adds a few handy layer editing options that should probably already be included in Photoshop. It includes 5 different tools: Layer Name Editor, Remove Unused Effects, Flatten All Layers Effects, Delete Empty Layers, and Rasterize Smart Objects.

Some of these might sound the same as what's already included in Photoshop, but behave a little differently. Flaticon Flaticon is a completely free compilation of over 45,000 vector icons that you can use in your designs.