Smooth Skins from Digital Heavens offers a lot of options, with a lot of support. It teaches all levels of Photoshop users a better way to clean up even dramatic skin imperfections but also gives the pros the natural results they want.
NoiseControl 1 is a plug-in for Photoshop and compatible programs (both Mac and Windows) thats remarkably effective at reducing image noise while keeping edge details and natural grain. It can also sharpen a noisy image without increasing noise, and even add simulated film grain to an image to make it appear more natural.
In this video series, Dave Cross shows off some creative ways to use Photoshop and Illustrator together. In the third video, Dave talks about Illustrator’s vast collection of shapes, symbols, textures, etc. that can be copied into Photoshop. Dave also explain how these symbols and textures can be used to create brushes in Photoshop.