 Plugins are needed to create many effects for an image such as color manipulation, insertion of ripples and other effects, and noise reduction.Although Helicon Filter supports many of these 8BF plugins, they are generally not needed due to the program's built-in features such as noise reduction, aberration removal, perspective adjustment, and so on.Both Helicon Filter and Adobe Photoshop are able to blend and combine images in several different ways, most notably as multi-exposures and HDRs.