What would/do you use for a lightning effect?

I know there is a plug in that makes lightning but I'm curious on what every else uses...

Well I don't use lightning......just not my thing...but I know there are a lot of tuitorials on it.

I went and found a few for ya':

http://www.dsigning.com/photoshop/tutorials/lightning/

http://www.spiritpower.org/photoshop/tutorials/lightning/lightning.htm

http://www.iserv.net/~rtideas/opt/index.html

I use the airbrush. I start out with a purple shade and a soft brush and draw the shape of the bolt (5 pixels or so wide), another layer traced with a smaller brush (3-4 pixels) with a blue shade and the last layer with a hard brush (white) at a width of two pixels for the main bolt and one pixel for the side bolts. You can change the opacity and the hue/saturation until you get just what you want. I use a graphics tablet for this....mouse bad/pen good! I like to draw by hand instead of lightning filters because you get just what you want. You could also draw the main bolt and save it to an alpha channel and expand it on another layer, fill it and put a gaussian blur to it
Later,
Justin

Ahh thank you Mattboy! Cudos to grassfolk for replying also...both were very helpful! Much thanks (bows)