Luce Plug In

[Chuck Engels]

Thanks to Bill Margol over at the Premiere Elements U2U forum, this is a great plug in to add light behind text among other things.

http://amicoperry.altervista.org/luce/main.html

[Paul LS]

Wow looks really neat... have to give it a go...

[Chuck Engels]

Well, after playing around with it for awhile I have come to a few conclusions.

1. It doesn't work with After Effects 7

2. It doesn't work very well with Premiere Elements v3

I created a PSD text graphic with no background and light purple text.
After importing into After Effects and applying the Luce effect it split the graphic in half, very weird. I did get an error saying the versions did not match.

I then imported the graphic into Premiere Elements 3 and applied the Luce effect. The light rays became light purple and the text became white. Any changes to the effect took way too long just dragging the numbers but if I manually typed in the numbers it was much faster.

Overall, I wish they would update the effect to work with newer versions of software. It looks great when it works, I am going to try it in version 2 when I get home tonight.

[BMargol]

It worked like a charm for me on PE2. I just dropped it in and bingo, there it was.

Bill

[Chuck Engels]

Hi Bill, I am going to give v2 a try tonight. There may be something different in v3 that causes it not to work just like AE7. Too bad because it really saves a lot of time and could be a great effect.

[Gerry]

Wow, cool effect. But, man, did this grind my system to a near-halt.

I simply created a title in PE2 and added the filter to it. Then I set it rendering. It said it wanted 1 hour 53 minutes to render 35 seconds' worth of title. And from the moment I dropped it on the title, PE2 was on a 3-second delay -- I'd hit a button... wait... wait...wait, then something would happen.

But again, VERY cool effect!

[Bob]

There shouldn't be any difference between V2 and V3 using the plugin. Both versions have the same level of After Effects API support. The author says to not try to use it in After Effects. I take it that it was developed solely as a Premiere plugin.

I've used this plugin before but avoid it because of the very long processing times. I found it worked best with white objects. I've used the Photoshop Luce plugin too and like it better as it responds faster and there are more controls. Of course, that's static.

I hope the author does more development and refinement on the Premiere plugin. That would be nice.

[Chuck Engels]

Thanks for the info Bob, sure saves me some time. I agree it would be great if the author would do a little more work. It would be great to be able to use this in After Effects, good free plug-ins are hard to find.

[ridon127]

I have tried to download the luce plug in and I get an error message that says: Could not place doecument because no parser or format can open this file. I hve PrEl 2.0 and Photoshop 5.0. Can someone tell me what I am doing wrong?
Thank you
Donna

[Bob]

I get an error message that says: Could not place doecument because no parser or format can open this file.

I thought about this some more. That message implies that you are trying to import something into your image. Photoshop and Photoshop Elements have a Place command to bring in art from Illustrator, PDF, or other source. I did an experiment and used the place command using the luce.8bi plugin as the image to bring in and I got that exact error message. Nothing else I tried gave me that message. I don't think you are explicitly using the Place command, but perhaps something you are doing invokes the Place command code implicitly on the plugin file.

Could you describe in detail the steps you are taking in Elements that lead up to getting that error message? That might give us a clue as to whats happening.

[ridon127]

I open my image which is a psd file. I click on special effects and click on luce, then the error message appears. I have deleted the file and done with a save and open. I have a horrible time with downloads.
Donna

[Bob]

Donna,

I suspect that you don't have the plugin installed in the right folder. I don't have PSE 5, but I would expect luce to be located in the filters menu, not the special effects palette. When you select the filter menu, you should see a menu item called "L'amico Perry" . Do you see that?

When you downloaded the luce plugin, you got a zip file containing the luce.8bi file which you had to extract. After you extracted the luce.8bi file, where did you put it? Please list the full path name to the folder.

Thanks.

[ridon127]

There is nothing that is named L'amico. It is Luce. I have deleted all the files but the full file name is :C:\Documents and settings\allusers\applicationsdata\adobe\photoshopelements\5.0\photocreations\specialeffects\filters\luce.
I am just about ready to give this up.
Thanks
Donna

[Bob]

I think we found the source of the problem. That's not where the plugin should be.

Without having PSE 5, I'm flying a little blind because they moved some things around from where they were with the previous version. But, there probably is a folder named: "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop Elements 5.0\Plug-Ins". That's normally where it should be placed.

If you don't see that folder, or if you want to keep your add-on plugins separate from the built-in ones, you can create an additional plug-ins folder instead. First create a new folder. It can be anywhere, but put it where you can find it easily. Put the luce plugin in that. Now tell Elements about it. Start Photoshop Elements 5 and go to edit preferences. There will be an entry for Plug-ins and Scratch Disks. Under that entry, there should be a check box that says "Additional Plug-ins Folder". Check that and then click on the "choose" button to select the plug-ins folder you created. Exit Photoshop Elements.

Now, the next time you start Photoshop Elements, Luce should work. Don't try to use it from the special effects palette -- it shouldn't be there but Elements caches the palette entries so you might see the old entry. Instead, you will need to go to the filter menu. There now should be an entry near the bottom that says "L'amico Perry". That's where Luce is located.

Give that a try and let us know how that works out.

FYI, the files in the "C:\Documents and settings\allusers\applicationsdata\adobe\photoshopelements\5.0\photocreations\specialeffects\" location are not plug-ins, actually they are Photoshop actions that were written for use in Elements. That's where you would install add-ons like "Grant's Tools" for example.

[ridon127]

Thank you so much for all your time Bob. I am going to go do some shopping as this has been very stressful (LOL). I feel that maybe getting some new shoes may calm my fraziled nerves. I will give it a try as soon as I get back. I really do appreciate all you are doing!!!!!!It's people like you that make this forum the best.
Donna