FAQs

Download and run our Plugin Environment Check script (Windows .bat / macOS .command) to diagnose the issue. It checks whether your system has the required Adobe apps (2022+), Creative Cloud, CEP engine, and extensions directories. Screenshot the result and send it to us if you need help.

If all checks pass but installation still fails, your Adobe application may not include UPIA (Unified Plugin Installer Agent). This is common with unofficial or stripped Adobe installers. Reinstalling Adobe apps through the official Adobe Creative Cloud should resolve the issue.

SciSuite's payment platform (Creem) accepts international credit/debit cards (Visa, Mastercard, etc.), Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Alipay (available for one-time purchases). The checkout page automatically displays the payment methods available in your region.

Alipay troubleshooting: Some users have reported a "card issuer declined the transaction" error when paying via Alipay. This is typically caused by the linked bank card blocking overseas transactions. To resolve this, switch your Alipay payment source to Yu'e Bao (余额宝) or Alipay balance instead of a bank card.

WeChat Pay and UnionPay are not yet supported. If you don't have access to any of the above payment methods, please email us at [email protected]. We can process your purchase manually and issue a license key on your behalf.

SciSuite plugins require Adobe Photoshop CC 2022 or later and Adobe Illustrator CC 2022 or later. Both Windows and macOS are fully supported. On Apple Silicon Macs (M1 and later), Photoshop must be launched in Rosetta mode for CEP extensions to work; Illustrator supports CEP natively on Apple Silicon and does not need Rosetta. See the Installation Guide for details.

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 Adobe license key includes two activations. You can use them however you like — activate both Photoshop and Illustrator, two Photoshop instances, two Illustrator instances, or any mix. PowerPoint license keys include one activation.

To move an activation to a different computer, open the plugin's flyout menu and select Deactivate License to free up the slot, then reactivate on the new machine.

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.

Two common causes:

1. Insufficient memory. CEP plugins add to the host application's memory footprint, and on machines with limited RAM the extra load can trigger a crash on startup. Try using an older version of the host application, which typically has lower memory requirements, and see if the issue goes away.

2. Certificate trust (2025/2026+). Newer versions of Photoshop or Illustrator may refuse to load CEP extensions signed with a personal developer certificate, causing a crash on startup. To fix this, enable PlayerDebugMode, which bypasses certificate validation. See the Installation Guide for instructions on enabling it.

No. Presets are stored outside the plugin folder, so a normal uninstall-and-reinstall will not affect them. They will only be lost if you perform a deep system cleanup.

This is almost always caused by a typo in the email address entered during checkout. The activation code is sent to the email you provided at the time of purchase — if that address contains a typo, the email will never arrive. Please check your spam/junk folder first. If it's not there, contact us with your order number or payment receipt, and we'll resend the activation code to the correct email address.

No. This is a known Illustrator rendering issue that occurs when GPU Performance is disabled. The document data is correct — only the display is stale. To fix it, go to Edit → Preferences → Performance (Windows) or Illustrator → Settings → Performance (macOS) and enable GPU Performance. This does not affect Photoshop.

Go to Edit → Preferences → Plugins (Windows) or Photoshop → Settings → Plugins (macOS) and make sure both Load Extension Panels and Allow Extensions to Connect to the Internet are checked. Restart Photoshop for the changes to take effect. This does not apply to Illustrator, which loads CEP extensions by default.

After payment, you will receive an email with a link to the Customer Portal. Open the portal, find your order, click the three-dot menu (⋮) in the top-right corner, and select Generate Invoice. If you cannot find the email, please contact us with your registered email and we can resend the portal link.

Try clearing the plugin cache. Quit Photoshop, go to ~/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop [version] Settings/ and delete the file PluginCache.psp, then relaunch Photoshop. This resolves a known cache corruption issue on Apple Silicon Macs running Photoshop in Rosetta. This does not apply to Illustrator.