What are your favorite Photoshop plug-ins?

[santoro80]

I'm using Alien Skin Exposure (for color grading) a lot, some times Color Efex. Currently I'm experimenting with Portraiture (retouching) and Mask Pro (masking). What about you? Do you have some good tips?

[amica999]

I used to use lots of plugs - but the more I get to know PS - the more I try to get effects done in PS only - what comes in handy though is the Topaz package - which I use frequently - may it be for noise reduction or simple effects like Topaz Details/Adjust after denoising....CEP very occassionally. The rest is just sleeping on my HDD :-)

[lkroll]

AAA Options filter for photo-edits. But I do like the artistic side more so I really like Xero's filters and Flaming Pear's filters as well as Microsoft's Impressionist. Not I use them in GIMP; GIMP has a few more filters with G'MIC being my favorite filter (and that includes all the ones I've already mentioned) since it has extreme capabilities for a variety of situations from artistic to photographic. But, sticking with you initial request, if you want a good plugin for photo enhancements, give AAA Options a try; it's free.

http://www.8bf.net/

[Joeven]

Impressionist and Buzz are fun to play with and they are free. Topaz Adjust and Contrast Master are good ones and fairly cheap. Alien Skin Exposure is good but you already know that.

Joe

[DannyRaphael]

(no particular order): Topaz Denoise, Impressionist, Color Efex Pro, Silver Efex Pro, PTLens, Akvis Sketch

[Kraellin]

hands down, filter forge!

[bpurvis]

I use Topaz (most of them), onOne Plug-In Suite (Photo Tools, Genuine Fractals, and Photoframe are the ones I use the most), Nik Color Efex and Viveza. Impressionist is great for photo art.

[Nanls]

Blow-up 2, Buzz, Lucis Art, Neat Image... not in the order

[plugsnpixels]

The plug-ins mentioned so far are all quite useful for both image enhancement and creative effects, and many developers offer discounts.

FWIW, LucisArt just went Windows-only (lack of Mac sales it seems, but at over $600 it's not surprising ;-) ).

Like Craig says, maybe most folks don't think of Filter Forge as a plug-in but it's extremely cool for both adding effects to existing images and creating textures from scratch. There's no limit to what you can do with it, because its library of thousands of preset filters is contributed by the user community.