Lately I seen a image of a wolf uploaded to facebook, and I immediately knew what effect was used. Granted that person did get the settings and the colorization good. But it was a plugin called fractalus that was used to create the image from the original photo. To illustrate this I used a photo of the beautiful Brooke Burns and applied a quick and dirty use of the tool on the image. While not as stunning as the wolf (depending on ones opinion on the subject matter). It illustrates that one does not need to know art to apply a plugin to get a rather unique and stunning photo effect.
As for Brooke Burns, she really needs no effects to be stunning. She can get my engine running any day.