This gallery is dedicated to Photoshop plug-ins that are sold by companies other than Adobe.
The first set of three "before and afters" have been made using Exposure 4 from a company called Alien Skin - their website is here. The number of preset effects in Exposure 4 is staggering, (too many to count), and the permutations of all the variable filters is overwhelming.
However beware of repetition! Note that the painted effect in image 2 is the same as image 4, but upside down! And I had to process Image 6 three times before I got the amount of "distressing" to look good enough.