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more help soon...
Thank you so much for using PD Particles. Most likely, you will find that installing and using PD Particles comes natural and is straight-forward and easy.
Still, and over time, we're going to have some feedback and solutions that a few may have encountered. Bookmark this page and come back soon.
For now, since much of PD Particles is based on the Optipustics particles and powered by Project Dogwaffle, here are some links to information that may help too, coming from Project Dogwaffle:
Here are some chapters of particular interest to users of PD Particles (even if some parts of the material presented are not applicable to PD Particles, or if some user interfaces are different):
- Particles and Bristles
- Color Mixing Basics
- Scrolling and Zooming
- Opening Files
- Brush
Settings (ignore parts about custom brushes)
- Paper Textures
- Fill
and Gradients
Also:
Also, be sure to join the official Dogwaffle forum at Yahoogroups - ask questions, we're all there, happily waffling and painting with Project Dogwaffle and PD Particles.
| Free Update Patches? |
| New! the 1.0a patch |
| Installation Problems? |
| Read the F.A.Q |
| downloads: |
| Patches |
| New!cooltools
#1 |
| Tutorials |
| Reviews: |
| Paint Magic a review by Tom Arah:  |
::: Known Problems
- using the PSD file format
Some versions of Photoshop have reported trouble loading the PSD files saved from PD Particles in some cases. We recommend that you save as 'Default Targa' or 'Tiff' or other formats if you experience similar problems, until we have a fix for this.
- Crash in 'Nova' style - fixed in the 1.0a patch
- no undo for large images?
::: Frequently Asked Questions
Installation Problems - Not the right software?!?
We have seen a few rare instances where the downloaded file after purchase & download appeared to be from a different product, typically something that already was on the client's computer, such as a printer driver or imaging tool. This is just an appearance, it is not a faulty installer, it is due to a pre-existing misconfiguration on your PC. In most cases it is easily corrected by a standard disk cleanup.
When such problem occurs, what happens is that during the first phase of the installation process, our installer starts by self-extracting a number of files which will eventually be placed into the final destination folder for PD Particles. These files are initially self-extracted into a temporary (Temp) folder, usually something like
C:\Documents and
Settings\'username'\Local Settings\Temp
where 'username' would be your login username, such as 'John' or 'mom' or 'superkid' or whatever.
After the first phase, i.e. after the self-extraction, our files should be there in the Temp folder, and one of these files is named setup.exe. Our installer then proceeds with the second phase, which is to run that setup.exe file (which is expected to be our setup.exe file).
Unfortunately, in some rare cases, it has been found possible for another setup.exe file to either be executed instead, perhaps from a different folder, if your system's Path variable was improperly messed up by installation of other software, or, and more likely, a prior setup.exe file was there in the Temp folder and is being kept in a locked state, and thus could not be updated or replaced with our installer's setup.exe file. The file may be in a locked state because another program is 'using' it. Or it was saved as a 'read-only' file by such, making it write-protected.. Thus, when our installer proceeds to run 'its' setup.exe file, your old printer driver or imaging utility or whatever that old setup.exe file was about could be re-run, making it appear like our installer is not PD Particle's installer.
To remedy this, you can try a few things. One first recommended task is to clean up the Temp folder. It's supposed to be for temporary folders and files in there. Windows offers a 'Disk Cleanup' utility for this.:
1) open 'My Computer'
2) right-click on the "C:" drive
3) select 'Properties'
4) click "Disk Cleanup"
There are various options for different things to be cleaned up. If you have never done a disk cleanup in years, you might want to select them all, you'll be surprised how much disk space you may regain along the way. But at least make sure that the 'Temp' folder option is selected so that Windows can try to cleanup the files found in there. We say 'try', because if a file is locked it will continue to stay in there, and you may need to manually go into the Temp folder to remove or at least rename the file so that it won't interfere with our installation.
After the disk cleanup is done, open the Temp folder to see if all files are gone. Ypu should probably also do a re-boot. (restart)
Then run our installer again. If it still fails, then the other scenario is probably happening: the setup.exe from a different folder is used. This is tricker to fix but can be done. Check the general FAQ for assistance. If you can't find the answer, please contact us.
Locating the culprit setup.exe file
You can use the Windows Search facility to find all files named setup.exe found on your system. One of them is probably the one being erroneousy executed. If you can locate it (look for the name of the folder that contains it), you may want to rename it to something like setup_bad.exe, at least temporarily, and see if you can then properly run the PD Particles installer.
Unfortunatey, it is likely that if your system's path was messed up by prior installation of that other sftware, it could still misbehave, and pick another (the 'next) setup.exe file.
Another workaround - run setup directly
Here's another workaround that might help, if after the first phase (self-extraction phase) all files including our setup.exe file were properly copied into the Temp folder. When the 'wrong' installer takes over, simply move it aside and ignore it for the time being (don't click 'Cancel', as that will remove the extracted files.)
Open the Temp folder where you will find the files that were just extracted. It should be something like
C:\Documents and
Settings\'username'\Local Settings\Temp
Find the file named setup.exe and run it. If it is our file, this should allow the second phase, i.e. the installation of PD Particles, to properly complete. If not, just cancel to abort.
Do you only see 'setup', without the '.exe' file extension ?
You can configure Windows Explorer to hide the file extensions, such as .exe, .jpg, .txt, etc... for known file types. That is in fact the default. We strongly recommend not to leave it this way, because it leaves you in the dark as to which files you're actually looking at.
For example, if you have several files in a folder, and the files have the same base name, such as
setup.exe
setup.txt
setup.bmp
setup.jpg
setup.txt
setup.bmp
setup.jpg
then you would only see them as
setup
setup
setup
setup
setup
setup
setup
and you have no immediate clue as to which file is which.
This is dangerous and can lead to accidentally running the wrong files. Even worst, if the file were a virus in hiding, such as sometimes found in email attachments, you may be putting your PC at risk. For example, if you have a file named
picture.jpg.exe
which is an executable, and potentially a virus, you would see it simply as
picture.jpg
if Windows Explorer is configured to hide the file, the type extension at the end (in this case the .exe part)
Thus, we recommend and strongly advise you not to stay in the dark, by preventing Windows from hiding the extension of known filetypes.
Here's how to do that:
1) Right-click on 'My Computer'
2) select 'Explore'
3) select Tools>Folder options...
4) click the 'View' tab
5) uncheck the option "Hide Filetypes for known files"
2) select 'Explore'
3) select Tools>Folder options...
4) click the 'View' tab
5) uncheck the option "Hide Filetypes for known files"
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