Windows Lucis Pro 6 Technical Support and FAQs
You have a 30-day Product Return Period. Please read the Product Return Policyon the Lucis Pro online store for more information.
Directions on how to easily create LucisArt 2 effects using Lucis Pro 6.
Directions on how to easily create LucisArt 3 effects using Lucis Pro 6.
Lucis Pro 6 does not work with Corel Painter or Paintshop Pro.
There are no teacher or student discounts available. ICT primarily sells to professional Photographers and scientists.
Click here for Windows-specific technical support, such as installation instructions and software patches.
Click here for Macintosh-specific technical support, such as installation instructions and software patches.
General FAQs
Does Lucis Pro 6.0 have demo or trial versions available?
What is a dongle?
How many users can I have?
On how many computers may I install Lucis Pro 6.0?
How large an image can I process with Lucis Pro 6.0? What is memory tiling?
How can I avoid "not enough RAM" errors?
How do I move my Lucis preset information to a new computer or back it up?
Does Lucis Pro 6.0 have demo or trial versions available? There is no downloadable demo or trial software because of the problems with hackers. Lucis Pro 6.0 is protected by a dongle, a USB hardware key. ICT will be posting video and other information so you can see how Lucis Pro works. There is a 30-day return policy (please visit Product Return and Refund Policy for complete information.)
What is a dongle? A dongle is a hardware security device that looks like a small memory stick. It is plugged into a USB port on the computer. Lucis Pro 6 will not work unless the dongle is installed. The dongle may or may not work from a USB hub- it depends on the hub.
One dongle comes with your software purchase. You have the option to buy a second dongle for $60 at the time of purchase. If you do not buy a second dongle when you buy your copy of Lucis Pro 6.0 you may order a second dongle later but the cost will be $100 plus any shipping and customs charges.
How many users can I have? The Lucis license is a one user license. You may install Lucis Pro 6 on up to 3 computers and use one computer at a time. The computer being used has to have a dongle installed into a USB port. Buying a second dongle does not mean that a second person can use Lucis Pro 6.0. But having a second dongle means that you can install one dongle on your desktop computer and one on your laptop computer and not worry about moving them. It also means that if you misplace or break a dongle your use of Lucis Pro 6.0 is not interrupted. Broken dongles are replaced for free during the first 30 days if they are returned. After that broken dongles are replaced for $100 plus shipping and customs charges if they are returned first. Replacing a lost dongle or buying a third dongle is $250 (plus shipping and customs charges) because each dongle represents a copy of the software.
On how many computers may I install Lucis Pro 6.0? You may install Lucis Pro 6.0 on up to 3 computers. However Lucis Pro is protected by a dongle so it will only work on the computer where the Lucis Pro dongle is installed. The Lucis Pro software checks for the presence of the dongle frequently and will quit working if the dongle is removed. So to use another computer you have to move the dongle to that computer.
How large an image can I process with Lucis Pro 6.0? What is memory tiling? If you have 4 GB of RAM or more you should be able to process 250 MB images (CS3) to 350 MB images (CS4x64) without using memory tiling. With memory tiling images up to 4 GB can be processed by dividing the image into sections or tiles, processing each tile separately, and then reassembling the tiles into the final image.
IMPORTANT: As you use Photoshop the RAM Photoshop accesses becomes fragmented. So if you have been using Lucis with no problem on images 250 MB in size or less and then at some point get a “need to tile message” it means the RAM is fragmented. To defrag the RAM select Edit | Purge | All. Or you can restart Photoshop.
If your image cannot be processed in one pass, and you will be asked whether or not you wish to tile the image. Unless you are processing a huge image please avoid using memory tiling. Tiling is slow and there can sometimes be artifacts at the edges of the tiles in areas of the image where the contrasts do not vary much, such as a clear blue sky. However note that with most images the contrasts vary enough that artifacts from tiling will not occur. Because of the possibility of these artifacts, you will be warned before the software processes any image that is large enough to require tiling.
Processing extremely large images with memory tiling in LucisArt 3 can be very slow. This applies not only to the actual processing operation (after you select OK in the user interface), but also to the process of actually showing the LucisArt 3 dialog. It is recommended that you experiment with LucisArt 3 settings on a smaller version of the image before trying to process the entire image. You can save some time by processing a small version of the image using your selected settings, opening the larger version, and using Photoshop’s “Last Filter” command (Ctrl-F on Windows or Cmd-F on the Mac) to bypass the LucisArt 3 user interface.
How can I avoid "not enough RAM" errors? If you should encounter a “not enough RAM” message, there are some things you can try in order to be able to process your image successfully.
1) Close any other Adobe applications, such as Adobe Bridge.
2) Defrag the RAM by selecting Edit | Purge | All. Or you can restart Photoshop.
3) Complete any operations that need to happen before the Lucis processing (such as resizing the image), save it to a temporary file, and then select Edit | Purge | All to defrag the RAM. Open the temporary file and perform the Lucis processing without doing anything else.
4) Set the number of Processing Scan Lines to 31 or 30. This slightly reduces output quality but greatly reduces memory usage. Note that 32 is a cutoff point, so anything less than that is just as good – there’s no difference between 1 and 31, in terms of memory usage.
5) If you are running a 32-bit version of Photoshop, try adjusting Photoshop’s “Available RAM” setting. This can be found in the preferences – on Windows, this can be accessed from Edit | Preferences | Performance, and on the Mac, it is at Photoshop | Preferences | Performance. The first thing to try is increasing the setting – this may make enough memory available for Lucis to complete the operation. If that does not solve the problem, try decreasing the setting. This is not entirely intuitive; why would reducing the amount of available memory solve an out-of-memory problem? The reason is that in some cases, Lucis is not actually running out of memory, but rather out of address space. Reducing Photoshop’s available RAM setting causes Photoshop to allocate less memory, leaving unused address space that LucisArt 3 can use to process images. This is not an issue if you are running 64-bit Photoshop CS4.
6) If none of the other measure has helped, consider upgrading your operating system and/or Photoshop version. Photoshop CS4 is significantly better at handling large amounts of memory than Photoshop CS3. If you are running Windows, the 64-bit version of Photoshop is even better. Running under 64-bit CS4 on a 64-bit version of Windows, the maximum image size supported by Lucis is almost unlimited.
How do I move my Lucis preset information to a new computer or back it up?
The Lucis presets are saved in a preset file named com.lucis.LucisPro.xml.. On Windows, the preset file is in the user’s Application Data folder. So on Vista or Windows 7, the preset file will be at C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Lucis. On Windows XP the preset file will be at C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Lucis.
On the Mac, the preset file will be in /Users/<username>/Library/Preferences.
You can simply copy this preset file and move it to the same place on another computer, and the next time you open Lucis it will be read. The format of the preset file is the same between Windows and Mac, so the preset file can even be moved from one platform to the other. If you uninstall and reinstall Lucis on a computer the preset file remains and the reinstalled Lucis Pro software will access it.
If you have important presets you should back up the preset file by copying it to a CD or DVD.
If you have additonal questions that are not answered by the web pages please e-mail support@lucispro.com.
