FAQs

SciSuite plugins require Adobe Photoshop CC 2022 or later and Adobe Illustrator CC 2022 or later. Windows is fully supported. On macOS, only Intel-based Macs (pre-M1) are supported — Apple Silicon Macs (M1 and later) have known issues with the CEP extension framework that prevent plugins from working reliably, so we are unable to offer support for those machines at this time. Mac users, please consider this carefully before purchasing.

Although Photoshop is primarily a raster image editor, it fully supports vector Shape Layers and Type Layers. SciSuite takes advantage of this: all annotations it generates, including scale bars, stroke borders, line markers, significance marks, tables, dimension markers, and labels, are created as Photoshop Shape Layers (vector paths with fill/stroke), not rasterized pixels. These shapes remain resolution-independent inside the PSD and stay crisp at any zoom level. When you export to PDF, the vector data is preserved; when you export to PNG or TIFF, Photoshop rasterizes them at the document's full resolution, so they are always sharp. This is the same reason fonts in Photoshop look clean at every size, because they are vector too.

Each license is tied to a single computer. If you need to use SciSuite on more than one machine, a separate license is required for each.

That said, transferring a license to a new computer is easy. On your current machine, open the plugin's flyout menu and select Deactivate License. This frees up your license key so you can reactivate it on your new computer.

Yes. Every plugin comes with a one-month free trial with full functionality, no credit card required. This gives you plenty of time to evaluate whether it fits your workflow before purchasing.

SciSuite is a one-time purchase with no recurring fees. Once you buy a license, it's yours to keep.

All minor version updates (bug fixes, small improvements) are free for the lifetime of your license. Major version upgrades, which introduce significant new features or architectural changes, require a separate purchase. That said, SciSuite is Bo's part-time project, so major version releases are not expected in the near future, so you can count on getting free updates for a long time.

Looking ahead, SciSuite is currently built on Adobe's CEP (Common Extensibility Platform), which is being phased out in favor of UXP (Unified Extensibility Platform). If the paid user base grows large enough to cover the development costs, and UXP matures to the point where it can support a project as complex as SciSuite, I plan to rebuild SciSuite on UXP. A UXP version would be released as a major upgrade.

"There is already an extension installed with that name" — This means a previous version of the same plugin is already on your computer, likely installed earlier through a different ZXP installer or by manually copying files. To resolve it, remove the old copy first: open Anastasiy's Extension Manager and check whether the plugin appears in the installed list — if it does, uninstall it from there. If it does not appear, the old files were probably installed manually; navigate to your CEP extensions folder (see the paths listed in the Installation Guide, Method 2, Step 3) and delete the plugin's folder. If you cannot locate the folder, use a file search tool such as Everything to search for the plugin's folder name. After removing the old version, retry the installation.

"No Adobe applications found for that extension" — This usually means the Extension Manager cannot detect a compatible Adobe application on your system. First, make sure you have Adobe Photoshop CC 2022 (or later) or Adobe Illustrator CC 2022 (or later) installed, then restart Anastasiy's Extension Manager and try again.

If the steps above do not resolve either error, your Adobe software may have been installed in a non-standard way (e.g. not through Adobe Creative Cloud). Some third-party or unofficial Adobe installers strip out the CEP extension framework and other components that plugins depend on. In this case, we recommend downloading and installing the official version of Photoshop or Illustrator directly from Adobe Creative Cloud, and then retrying the plugin installation.