Manual installation of Photoshop plug-ins


On Windows

  1. The plug-ins are located in the "utils" folder of your Photo Ninja installation. For instance, "C:/Program Files/Picturecode/PhotoNinja1.3.7/utils/".
  2. Copy the PhotoNinjaFilter64.plugin and PhotoNinjaFormat64.plugin folders (including contents) to the "Plug-ins" folder of Photoshop. Typically this is in a location like "C:/Program Files/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop CC 2018/Plug-ins/".
  3. Inside each plug-in folder is a file named "QtCorePcQt4.dll". Copy one of those to the root of the Photoshop installation (i.e. to the same folder that contains the "Photoshop.exe" executable. This is usually the parent of the Plug-ins folder, for instance "C:/Program Files/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop CC 2018/".
  4. Restart Photoshop.

Step 3 is necessary to make sure the DLL can be located reliably when Photoshop invokes the Photo Ninja plug-in.


On Mac OS X

You need to use the "sudo cp -RL" command in a shell (terminal window) to copy the plug-ins. They contain some aliases to a framework, and if you use the Finder to copy via drag-and-drop the aliases aren't dereferenced. So, when the plug-in launches, it can't find the framework.

To do this, open a terminal window and execute the following commands (adapting the pathnames if they are different on your system):

  1. cd "/Applications/PhotoNinja1.3.7/Contents/utils"
  2. sudo cp -RL PhotoNinjaFilter.plugin "/Applications/Adobe Photoshop CC 2018/Plug-ins/" (You'll be prompted for your password)
  3. sudo cp -RL PhotoNinjaFormat.plugin "/Applications/Adobe Photoshop CC 2018/Plug-ins/"

That should do it. Restart Photoshop and see if it works.

An explanation in case you're not familiar with the terminal window: The "cd" command means "change directory". It puts the terminal in the Photo Ninja "utils" folder. The "cp" command copies files or folders. "-RL" means copy recursively (everything in the folder) and dereference aliases/links. The "sudo" command means run the command as a superuser, which is needed to copy into the Applications folder.

You might also need to launch the Photo Ninja standalone app the first time, so it can write its location into a preferences file that the plug-in uses to find the app. (The plug-in is just a network bridge between Photoshop and Photo Ninja.)