Are your Photoshop Plugins compatible with Windows Vista?

Yes! If you're running the latest version...

Our plugins work with Windows Vista, but you need the latest version of our plugins. You can download the latest versions from here:

http://www.namesuppressed.com/design/downloads.shtml

The earliest Vista compatible versions are:

• Softener 1.27
• Plaid Lite 1.14
• Autochromatic 2.05
• Autointerlace 1.30
• Simple Tools 1.00

The plugins work with both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Vista. However, you must use the 32-bit version of your graphics program. For example, if you use Photoshop CS4, you should use the 32-bit version even if you have a 64-bit version of Vista. (See the example highlighted in blue below.) Our plugins are 32-bit only, so they won't work with 64-bit versions of Photoshop.

If you get an error asking you to reinstall the plugin

You should try uninstalling the plugins, then reinstall them into a folder on your C Drive called Plugins (ie C:\Plugins). You will then need to setup your graphics program to look in C:\Plugins for your plugins. You can find more information to help with this here:

http://www.namesuppressed.com/support/plugins-writeprotect.shtml

(Technically: the problem is that Windows Vista and Windows XP Limited-User accounts do not have "write permissions" set for the Program Files folder, where most Photoshop plugins folders are. If you are computer savvy and know how to change these permissions yourself, you can try that instead.)

If the plugins still crash on Vista or newer

If you experience crashes when running the plugins on Vista or newer, try turning off Data Execution Prevention for your graphics programs. You can find instructions for doing that here:

http://www.thewindowsclub.com/turn-off-data-execution-prevention-dep (Archive.org version)

If that still doesn't solve the problem, try searching your computer for the files ns-softener.8bf, ns-plaidlite.8bf and ns-autochromatic.8bf. If you have more than one copy of any of those files, you may still have an older version of the plugin on your computer. In that case, try uninstalling the plugins, deleting the files listed above, and reinstalling the plugins.

Vista Folder Virtualization issues

If you turn off Vista's "virtualization" feature, you may encounter some problems. Most people will never need to turn off virtualization, and if you don't know what it is you're probably not affected by it. These settings are located in the file secpol.msc, in the Security Settings -> Local Policies -> Security Options branch. At the very bottom is the setting "User Account Control: Virtualize File and Registry Write Failures to Per-User Location". It is only if this is set to "Disabled" that you will experience those problems.

We'll be adding full Vista support (including with Virtualization turned off) in future versions of our plugins.

See Also:

Are the plugins compatible with Vista x64 and Windows 7 64-bit?