Photo Booth is a built-in app on your Mac that’s fun to play around in. You can use it to capture photos and videos with your FaceTime camera or even use the app as a mirror. But many of us use it because we love playing with the Effects tab and taking silly photos in our downtime.

You can actually add more effects to Photo Booth if you know where to look. There aren’t many new ones generated these days, but you can still get 90 new ones if you follow our tips below for downloading and installing them.

Get Photo Booth Effects From CatEye

Created by the company b-l-a-c-k-o-p, CatEye is a free collection of video and photo effects that were created in 2008, and have been updated as recently as 2020.

Organized into five sets, CatEye gives you about 40 effects to play with that include tiling, 1980s graphics, and an entire set that let you look like you’re on a retro TV. Sure, you can edit pictures in the Photos app to get similar effects, but editing them live in Photo Booth can really save you some time.

To install the CatEye effects, head to the CatEye website and click on the Free Download or download here links. On the page that appears, click the BLKOPCAT9_esd.dmg link, and on the next page hit Download CatEye. Click Allow if your browser asks permission to download the file.

CatEye download webpage on the B-L-A-C-K-O-P website

Make sure Photo Booth is closed on your Mac and head to your Downloads folder to open the BLKOPCAT9_esd.dmg file there. A folder will open containing several PKG files that each contain one set of effects.

Double-click on one PKG file at a time. Each time, an installer window will appear. Follow the instructions within the installer to download and integrate the set of effects, making sure to select your hard drive as the installation location.

CatEye effects .dmg packages folder open on a Mac

When the installation is complete, you’ll get a prompt asking if you want to move the installer to the Trash. Click on the Keep button until you’ve installed the last set, as otherwise the BLKOPCAT9_esd folder will close and you’ll have to pull it out of the Trash to download the other sets.

A CatEye effects package installer open on a Mac, asking about putting the completed installer in Trash

Once you’ve installed each set, open Photo Booth and click on the Effects button. Normally in Photo Booth, you’ll see three pages of built-in effects. After your CatEye installation, you should now see five more pages of them!

Click on the right arrow icon or click on the later pages to scroll through all of your new effects. You’ll see previews of each as you scroll, but if you want a picture or video with a particular effect, just click on it, and then hit the red Photo or Record Video button.

CatEye effects installed and being previewed in Photo Booth

Download Filters from More iChat Effects Into Photo Booth

Though not as recently updated as CatEye, More iChat Effects by Mac Poupou Factory still offers a wonderful set of 56 effects totally free on the Mac Poupou downloads page.

Sure, you can get desktop apps that let you add Instagram-like filters to photos, but the options provided by Photo Booth effects are a lot sillier, and a lot harder to recreate.

MoreIchatEffects download webpage on Mac Poupou website

To download and use these effects, click on the More iChat Effects 2.0.5 (Top) link on the downloads webpage. If asked for permission to download the file by your browser, click Allow.

Make sure Photo Booth is closed on your Mac, and then go to your Downloads folder to find and click on a file called MoreIchatEffects.pkg to open it.

MoreIchatEffects .pkg file in Mac's Downloads folder

Your Mac may not let you open this PKG file at first, stating that it’s from an unidentified developer. This is related to More iChat Effects not being recently updated (it’s last update was in 2013). The effects are still safe to download and use, though, you just need to give your Mac permission to open and use them.

To give this permission, open System Preferences > Security & Privacy, and go to the General tab. Below the Allow apps downloaded from header you should find a warning that says “MoreIchatEffects.pkg" was blocked from use.

Security & Privacy window in System Preferences open with MoreIchatEffects developer warning

Click on the lock icon on the page to allow for changes, and then click the Open Anyway button beside the warning text. Click Open in the window that appears to verify you want to open the file, and input your Mac password when prompted.

The More iChat Effects installer should now open. Follow the instructions it provides and select your Mac hard drive as the installation location for all of your new effects. Once the installer is finished, you can send it to the Trash or keep it—that’s up to you.

MoreIchatEffects installer open on Mac

To confirm the download worked, open Photo Booth and click the Effects button. You should see six new pages of effects, all in alphabetical order. Go ahead and click through them to preview and try them all out so you can find a favorite amongst your many new options!

MoreIchatEffects effects installed in Photo Booth

Make Photo Booth More Fun With New Effects

Photo Booth effects aren’t commonly made anymore, but thankfully some really great ones have been updated and maintained after all these years. We really like the 90-plus effects found in CatEye and More iChat Effects, and we hope you download them yourself using our tips above.

Whether you use the app with kids, or just to goof around by yourself, new effects will liven things up and make Photo Booth a little fresher and more fun. We know we’ll be playing with all of our new effects for a while—have some fun with them yourself!