What Plugins do you use and why?

Stustaff

Started to notice that quite a lot of people use plugins(I know im a bit slow)

Thought it might be useful to collate some of the best?

so if you have a plug in that is useful share what it is and why its worth the money oh and where to get it from.

e.g
Nik color efex pro 2.0 It has a large selection of really nice filters you can apply in PS rather than at the time you shot, Extremely useful if like me you dont have lots of filters. Review and link to demo here - http://www.freephotoshop.com/html/nik_multimedia.html

GraphyFotoz

Nik Color Efex is a GREAT package popular and very useful!

VirtualPhotographer plug-in is widely used....FREE and very helpful for BW conversion also other special effects as well!
http://www.optikvervelabs.com

There are sooooo many diff plug-in's it's hard to keep up with em anymore!

saurora

I have Nik Color Efex and several of the Auto FX series. While nice to have, they are pretty costly. The one I use the most and have the best results with, is Virtual Photographer which is a freebie. It has a wide variety of actions, both color and black and white, plus you can customize your own look from scratch or adjust a pre-set action. It's very easy to use and fine tune. I like VP's Snap ('pops' the image), Reminiscing (rich, brown-toned B&W) and the Anvil (gritty, contrasty, toned B&W). I use them for different reasons. Sometimes just because I'm bored. It can be really helpful with images that are problematic...if I'm having trouble in CS getting what I think I want, I pop it into VP and play around with it. If I'm not wanting to spend much time perfecting a shot that is not that important to me, I use the "Snap" action. I actually like all of their actions well enough to run an image through each one to see the results.

Stustaff

Thanks guys good stuff! Im definately going to look into VP then!

Anymore recommendations people?

DavidTO

When I bought Welcome to Oz it came with two free Nik filters: Skylight and Contrast only. I had used the Nik filters before, and that Skylight filter is really nice, I like it a lot.

Anyway, you get a great book and a couple of free filters....just sayin'.

saurora

So that book finally published! I had it on order forever and then never heard anymore...guess I'll run on over to Amazon for a new book....and some filters I probably already have!