Unable to save presets in free particle plugin

mabrown · Post by **mabrown** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 11:07 am

Hi Everyone,

I've recently downloaded Ulead's free particle plugin, which I find really useful. I'm unable to save presets though. Whenever I click the "Add" button, I'm presented with a message box which says "Preset folder doesn't exist."

I'm not using PhotoShop. Instead I have tried it with Serif PhotoPlus and IrfanView, plus some other "compatible" programs. All give the same error.

I have tried installing to different folders, directory paths with simpler names (eg. no spaces) and creating dummy folders in ways which seemed logical to me (eg Adobe\Photoshop\Presets.) Nothing has worked.

Finally, I saw a review for PhotoImpact 8 which seems to incorporate the particle plugin's functionality. Is this still a part of the current version? Does it have a larger preview window than the plugin? Does it produce an effect with better resolution (ie. a bit less pixelated looking?) These two items (plus the presets problem) are the only faults I can find with this excellent freebie.

Many thanks for any help.

Mark Brown

Post by **VikingAnimations** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 11:57 pm

At the moment all I can think of checking would be for this...

Do you have this folder on your system?
C:\Program Files\Ulead Particle.Plugin\data\

The data folder seems to be where my installation of Particle Plugin wants to save the preset information...

mabrown · Post by **mabrown** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 3:35 am

Thanks for your reply Robert.

Unfortunately, I have exactly that path to the particle plugin. I also figured that "data" was the presets folder. I can actually load the standard presets, no problem. I just can't save any of my own

To see if this problem happens with the other plugin freebies, I installed the warp and art texture plugins. They work perfectly despite having exactly the same type of directory structure.

This is really weird. I'll try installing on another machine and see what happens.

Thanks for your help.

Mark

Post by **VikingAnimations** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 4:33 am

Well, good luck with that! Maybe someone else has the answer to that one...

mabrown · Post by **mabrown** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 2:08 pm

Hi again...

Well, this is the strangest computer problem I've had in quite some time.

I tried switching off read-only for the folder attributes but this didn't help. Tried to save another sort of file to the directory... no problem. Loaded the preset file in a text editor, modified it and saved it back to itself without problem. Tried to load the presets with the plugin using the modified file and as expected no presets would load (no error message though.) Restored the file, presets load but will not save, giving the same error message. Tried installing to the root of C. Doesn't help.

Installed the plugin on another machine and it works perfectly....

Mark

mabrown · Post by **mabrown** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 2:21 pm

I just fixed it!

The files and folders on this machine are compressed using the regular win xp compression. I switched off file compression for the plugin folder only and all of a sudden it works

What i don't get is that it didn't matter for the other two plugins. The other machine on which it worked first go also has file compression.

Very strange but I'm happy it works now

Mark

Post by **VikingAnimations** » Sat Jan 13, 2007 12:43 am

Well how about that... Who woulda thunkit. File compression!

Thanks for sharing the fix!