Advanced Excerpt Plugin

I wanted to be able to adjust the_excerpt() php call so that I could customize the posts that showed on my homepage. Specifically I wanted to be able to keep any images from the post and have it show as part of the excerpt. Turns out that there is already a plugin for this! Check out Advance Excerpt written by Bas van Doren.

It works really well and you can customize a lot of different settings in how your posts will display.