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It seems that Vista never fails to entertain – yesterday’s little diversion was a game of hide-and-seek with a pbk file that I generated using Adobe’s Pixel Bender Toolkit. I had successfully compiled and run my little pixel blender filter which takes center coordinates and radius input parameters from the Photoshop (or Flash) user and creates a contained circular convergence of perimeter pixel colors in the image. It worked wonderfully on the sample image in the PB Toolkit and I saved it with the other kernal files accessed by Photoshop as Pixel Blender filters in the Program Files Adobe folder. When I went to run the filter in Photoshop however, it wasn’t anywhere to be found. I navigated to the Program Files Adobe folder – and found no evidence that my kernal file was there. I went back to the PB Toolkit and saved the pbk file again, making certain (even though I was already certain) that I had indeed saved the file in the right place.

It took me several times back and forth before I noticed a tab labeled “Compatibility Files” at the top of my Files List. Aha…my file was hiding inside and completely invisible and inaccessible to Photoshop. How amusing, I thought. Now why would my file be sitting there? It turns out that in an attempt to keep legacy apps running, Vista lets them pretend to write to their familiar file locations — often under their installation folder in Program Files. Vista actually stores the files in a “Virtual Store” under the AppData store in the User folder.

Ignoring the mysterious virtual folder, I promptly re-generated my kernal, placed it on my desktop and then copied it to the appropriate Program Files Adobe folder (with admin privilege of course). This time the file showed up where expected and appeared on the list of filters in Photoshop Pixel Blender. Not the approved solution, I’m sure, but sufficient until I move on to a less playful operating system.

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