There are various jQuery plugins for filtering and sorting elements where the most popular ones are Isotope and Quicksand.

MixItUp is another great plugin to handle such tasks that deserves to be bookmarked.

While jQuery part decides which elements to show or hide, CSS3 transitions are used for animating them.

The plugin plays nice with responsive + fluid layouts it is lightweight and works pretty fast.

There are many options for customization: effects, easing, their speed, etc. and it is very well-documented.

Filter Forge is a professional and paid Photoshop plugin that comes as a pack of filters to generate textures, create visual effects, enhance photos and process images.

The better part is, it enables you to create your own filters with a visual node-based editor. So, there are unlimited possibilities.

You can share the filters created with the community (it is possible to get a free license by doing that.) and also download the 7500+ ready-to-use ones.

Most filters of the plugin support seamless tiling with a click(the ones you create as well), even for non-square textures.

Every filter generated is resolution-independent. They can be rendered in any resolution without losing any details.

Compared to old-style point lights, Filter Forge uses HDRI lighting which end up in more realistic outputs.

Besides formats like JPG or BMP, works can be saved in high-precision image formats such as OpenEXR or PFM which allows to retain every single bit of precision.

And, another great feature is: it can works as a standalone application as well.

To sum up, Filter Forge is pretty different than the traditional plugins by not sticking to several effects but makes possible creating almost every type of filter.