can ff run consistently?

Does anyone know how to make ff run consistently without errors, crashing photoshop, or saying it cannot run because it is already running? I purchased the 'pro' version.

I have never had such a frustrating program and there doesn't seem to be any help available.

Coleen, you should get a reply from the support team.

Maybe to help you more and better I think it would be better if you explain more and with more details what you mean with "consistently" and exactly what is wrong and what happens, so it could be reproduced and know better how to help

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or saying it cannot run because it is already running?

This is not wrong and is the default way, and is not an error message, I mean that you ONLY can have JUST ONE filter forge running, if you open the standalone version you CAN´t use then the Photoshop plugin version, you need to close the standalone version to be able to use the filter forge plugin, and the same if the plugin is open, you can´t use the standalone.

I have 2 copies of ff4 pro ( want/need more). I have run each of them for over 2 days straight without problems. I do this over and over again. I run them on win7 and win8 computers where I overclock and use all 8 threads (intel i7 ) all at full power and fans - all threads at 99% for days. No issues ( see below for early issues).

details if interested -- I run as scripts I write where commands call either 1) photoshop ( droplets and actions) and 2) using the batch tool ( by aba batchman - it is great and made everything stable). My trick that made all work well is that each command ( to PS or FF) is a seperate get in and get out exe. So then each exe is line of code in a batch file. I then use a windows batch file to read sets of images fr om folders and run many different art making images sessions ( 5-10 commands, renaming and saving). 20 different once in one batch for as long as it takes to do all the images in a folder for all the scripts ( days). Then I look at the output ( art images) reflect, rewrite and of course do that again. I use my home and work computer. At home I use teamviewer to login to my very fast work computer to run things flat out ( keeping my home computer open for ff experiments and everything else). I am able to check into , look at the output folder while things are running and even download all the finish work.

While I had significant problems with my scripts and had to try many methods - all of the issues were on the Photoshop side which tripped on droplets and actions of certain complexity and going back and forth between Photoshop and filter forge and using Photoshop layers. Errors included doing 2 passes of every FF call or Photoshop tripping on something where I get a error dialog box fr om PS. I no longer use it like that instead I go into Photoshop ( droplets/actions) only for each Photoshop call ( levels, color enhancements) and FF ( batch tool with one command) for each thing I do ( each line of code) and that has fixed all my issues. It also means I have a codeing language of about 10 meta commands ( either run one thing in Photoshop or one thing in FF) and can write different scripts. I do have to put delays in my batch code around successive calls to Photoshop to not get PS errors.

I do not use the texture side of FF I should say, on the art / image filtering side and write my own filters based on what others have done. I am artist (one side) and cognitive AI research professor with PhD students in my lab. The work I do is to make emotional portraits from photo sources both for art therapy and art education. So we use FF in significant ways wh ere the output scripts generate images that we do studies on to see how they effect people emotionally (how does this picture make you feel based on this psychological metric) and hope we then can make systems to take your picture and get you to de-streess by biofeedbacking to an emotional state you want to be at (by moving to that calming art portrait of you). Also on the art ed side we want you to be able to take your face and make portraits in different styles to understand how artists think. We use AI systems for this.

Ok so my point is that for our industry/art gallery and research uses FF4 used in a over the top significant way ( large FF filter scripts uses in sequence with Photoshop processing, as scrips run wh ere we need repeatable high res results on multiple computers at the fastest cpu and overclocked speeds and well FF holds fine and is a strong program - no issues. Adobe photoshop has been our weak link. And of course we wish FF processing was faster. Has anyone bought and tried the new 8 core i7 cpus ( or even 6 core) to see if that give much better speed?