Top 10 Add-ons for Adobe Premiere

Creative professionals are always pressed for time. It's the nature of the job that deadlines loom over the horizon and there's never enough hours in the day to finely craft that final video edit. In fact, when asked about their biggest roadblock to productivity, 27% of creatives say they don't have enough time to be creative. Which is why they have to be on the lookout for ways to streamline workflows and make work more efficient.

For video professionals, Adobe Premiere Pro is one of those powerful tools that allow you to bring a vision to life onscreen. And Premiere Pro gives users a large assortment of add-ons that can help expand your options for editing and compositing your videos.

Here are the top 10 most useful and most popular Adobe Premiere Pro add-ons, both paid and free.

The Top 10 Adobe Premiere Add-ons

1. Twixtor

This add-on gives you the ability to slow down or speed up your videos without adding any retiming artifacts. In short, it makes slow-motion or sped-up sequences look fabulous. I know what you're thinking: "Let's do some bullet-time sequences a la The Matrix!" Go ahead, Wachowski wannabe.

Price: Twixtor V6 $329.95 / Twixtor V6 Pro $595
Link: http://revisionfx.com/products/twixtor/

2. MFreeEffectsBundle

Don't forget that video is just one half of the equation. The other is audio. The MFreeEffectsBundle is probably one of the most complete — and still totally free — audio add-ons for Premiere out there. You get over 20 built-in audio tools, including an equalizer, compressor, flanger, frequency analyzer, mixer, and much more. What it can't do: make you sound like T-Pain (and thank goodness for that).

Price: Free
Link: http://www.meldaproduction.com/MFreeEffectsBundle

3. Magic Bullet Colorista III

This is the latest version of the original Colorista add-on. It's basically a three-way color corrector, allowing you to adjust shadows, mid-tones, and highlights. Each option has its own color wheel for fine-tuned adjustments, and gives you a wealth of other color and tracking options. This add-on is produced by the folks at Red Giant Software, who are also responsible for two other add-ons in this list. (They have a lot of good stuff.)

Price: $199
Link: https://www.redgiant.com/products/colorista-iii/

4. Magic Bullet Mojo 2.0

Also by Red Giant Software, Mojo 2.0 allows you a quick way to give your videos the stylized color grade of a Hollywood film, while being able to preserve (or tweak) skin tones so your talents stand out from the background. If your videos are in a specific genre where this style works best (e.g. action/adventure, sports footage, or fashion) then this gives you easy color grading in seconds.

Price: $99
Link: https://www.redgiant.com/products/mojo/

5. Manifesto

What's an epic video without a mind-blowing credit sequence? Manifesto is a free add-on that gives you some powerful options for displaying titles onscreen. You can quickly generate static titles, title rolls, and title crawls. The only important question left to answer is: can it do Star Wars-style backward title scrolls? Actually FxFactory, the people behind Manifesto, made a special tool (Star Titler) just for that trick.

Price: Free
Link: https://fxfactory.com/info/manifesto/

6. Digisuite (Damage, Phenomena, Tweak, & Aura)

This bundled suite of 4 add-ons from Digieffects gives you a total of 41 tools to do everything from glitching up your video (Damage); controlling lighting effects (Aura); simulating fire, fireworks, or electricity (Phenomena); to generating patterns, textures, and animated warping effects (Tweak).

Price: $299
Link: http://www.digieffects.com/products/damage-phenomena-tweak-aura

7. Universe 2

Yet another from Red Giant, this add-on gives you over 60 GPU-accelerated effects and transitions, even allowing you to achieve the stylized retro look of Kung Fury as well as generate the looping backgrounds and motion graphics we've all come to expect from science-related videos.

Price: $99/year
Link: http://www.redgiant.com/universe/

8. FilmConvert Pro

This is a convenient way to mimic the look and feel of different film camera profiles as well as 19 different film stocks. Basically, it's a digital way to achieve an analog look. Choosing specific film stocks may introduce some grain and noise to the picture, while giving you control over white balance, exposure, and brightness. And suddenly, even your most antiseptic digital footage can look like it was shot on a Super 35 back in 1975. Perfect for your fan sequel to Stranger Things.

Price: $149
Link: http://www.filmconvert.com/

9. Free Organic Particle Effects

This is a free add-on from Vegasaur that does one thing excellently: it allows you to add real dust particle effects to any footage you've already filmed. Want dust motes flying in light beams or small bits of snow falling gently from a calm sky? This is a simple tool that allows you to generate these particles quickly. Just don't expect to create a disaster movie with this!

Price: Free
Link: http://vegasaur.com/free-organic-particle-effects

10. FilmImpact - Transition Pack 1

It's really simple: these are 10 transitions you can use right out of the box to shift from one scene to the next. Among the 10 choices included: blur dissolve, flash, push, roll, stretch, and even a copy machine swipe.

Price: $49
Link: https://www.filmimpact.net/plugin/transition-pack-1/