Your favorite Photoshop plugins?

[jdk]

What are some of your favorite Photoshop plugins/filters?

[DNBA]

drop shadow and blur

[jdk]

How about paid ones that are not included with Photoshop. i.e.) Alienskin, NVR Bordermania etc

I am looking to buy some decent ones to add to my photoshop

[Acro]

Doug, it depends on what you want to do. Someone who works more with photography would use different plugins than those of a web designer. Personally, I use no plug-ins for my work. As all-drop jokingly said, it's drop shadow and blur - plus sharpen and gradients

Here's a nice collection of free ones.

[jdk]

I just reinstalled photoshop again and was looking for some nice plugins most use. I guess I will play around with the ones you guys mentioned that are built in.

[Fatbat]

I've tried just about every PS plugin out there since the days of Kai's Power Tools 1 & 2, and to be honest, I just don't use them. My current CS3 install is filterless, the built in layer effects and filters will let you do 99% of the effects you will most likely ever need. The rest are gimmicks that you'll rarely use.

You would be better off investing your $ in high quality source material, stock photos and fonts than in filters IMO.

I tend to use Illustrator a lot, and there are a few filters for that which are indispensable, namely the Extream Path Smart Rounding tool, which lets you set non destructive round corners for convex and concave angles independently of one another. It's far superior to Illustrator's built in rounding tools. Also, Panopticum's Array filter can be quite handy.