I'm very much looking forward to the release of Photoshop 7, but I was wondering if there was a way to transfer by 3rd party plugins to Photoshop 7 without leaving Photoshop 6 on my computer or going through the whole installation process for each one again. Can I simply copy the old plug-in directory to the new one? Any ideas?

In theory you should be able to leave the plugins folder you have now in tact, and just create a shortcut to it in the new plugin folder.

In reality, some of the stuff may still have to be re-installed. The only way to know for sure is when the time comes.

The other option would be to save the old folder in a temp area, then after PS 7 is installed open it, select everything in there and copy it to the new one. Effectively this does the same as above, but eliminates an extra folder as you can delete the old one after you are done.

there are some filters that put stuff in your registry, that might be deleted and the like when overwriting PS6. Me thinks the best way to do this transition would be to make a copy of the plugins folder (or rather, all your plugins that aren't included with photoshop, cause there'll prolly be updated version in PS7), and when you install photoshop 7, give the directory for it the same name it was for PS6, then copy your plugins to the plugin folder. Or you could just take the easy way out. Keep all the plugins in a separate folder at all times, and in your scratch disk/plugins section of the preferences (it was in that spot in PS6), just point it to the plugin directory, and restart photoshop for all of them to load.

you may have to re-register some of them ie; flaming pear