1. If you haven't already, open a new SoundSpectrum support ticket and thoroughly describe the problem you're having. Be detailed. The more details and information you provide, the more likely SoundSpectrum will be able to assess your problem.
2. Start SoftSkies in your media player (or SoftSkies Standalone).
3. Press SHIFT+i. You should see several lines of small white text appear within SoftSkies. If you don't see this text, ensure that SoftSkies has keyboard focus. If you're using Windows Media Player, enter full screen mode while SoftSkies is running in order for your key presses to be effective.
4. On your desktop, you should now see a file named "SoundSpectrum Log.txt". Open this text file, select all (CTRL+A on Windows and Command+A on OS X), and copy its contents to the system clipboard (CTRL+C on Windows and Command+C on OS X).
5. Paste the text to your support ticket (CTRL+V on Windows and Command+V on OS X) and submit it.

1. Exit/Quit all running instances of SoftSkies.
2. While holding the SHIFT+ALT (or SHIFT+OPTION) keys, start SoftSkies Standalone (or start your media player and then SoftSkies).
3. When SoftSkies starts while the above keys are pressed, you will see several lines of small white text printed to the screen and "SoundSpectrum Log.txt" will be saved to your desktop.

1. Open the Global Preferences.txt file (for Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\USER_NAME\ Application Data\SoundSpectrum\SoftSkies\, for Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8: C:\Users\USER_NAME\ AppData\Roaming\SoundSpectrum\SoftSkies\, and for OS X: home/Library/Preferences/ SoundSpectrum/SoftSkies/).
2. Change the Screenshot.Dir preference to specify a different screen shot folder. For example, on Windows XP, you can change:
   Screenshot.Dir = "C:\\Documents and Settings\\USER_NAME\\Desktop"
   to, for example:
   Screenshot.Dir = "C:\\Documents and Settings\\USER_NAME\\My Documents"

1. Disable background tasks (ex, virus scanners, file sharing apps, system monitoring)
2. Disable audio extensions and add-ons — Most media players (and some third parties) offer audio post-processing which can alter the sound of your music. Unfortunately, this can have a negative performance impact on your system, causing SoftSkies to run slowly or stutter. Try disabling sound equalizers, audio filters, DSPs, etc.
3. Disable CPU power-saving features — For example, on Mac OS X, setting "Processor Performance" to "Reduced" in the Energy Saver system preference panel slows down the CPU (in an attempt to reduce power consumption).
4. Try using SoftSkies Standalone — SoftSkies Standalone (bundled with SoftSkies Platinum) doesn't have the overhead associated with running through a media player so it runs significantly smoother than running SoftSkies in a media player.
5. Experiment with advanced CPU settings — Some users have reported that performance or smoothness of frame rate improves when hyperthreading (HT) is disabled (on Intel-based machines) or when process affinity is set to a specific CPU (on multiprocessor machines).

Creating your own images for use with the "Formations" feature is simple. The images should be 128x128 pixels and be in PNG format. When the images are transformed into clouds, they will lose some of their original form and detail, so although any grayscale image will work, the best results are seen with pure black & white images.

Once you have created your Formations image, it can be added to an existing Formations category or to an entirely new category. You can find the folders containing the Formations inside of your SoftSkies engine folder. To add a new Formations category, simple create a new folder including an "Icon.png" file.

Users with proficiency in Photoshop, GIMP, or other image editing software can create their own photos for use with Living Images.

To create a photo for use with Living Images, you'll need to have a transparency layer, also known as an alpha channel, to an image so that the image is transparent in areas where clouds should be displayed. This means that you should edit an image to make all areas of exposed sky transparent. In Photoshop, the "background eraser" tool is especially helpful for background removal.

The resulting image should be saved as a PNG file with the alpha channel enabled. The image should be placed in the "My Skies" subfolder in the SoftSkies engine: SoundSpectrum/SoftSkies/Living Images/My Skies

If you're not sure where the SoftSkies engine is located, please see the engine FAQ entry.

Once you add your sky images, you will see them appear in the "My Skies" menu in the Living Images menu the next time the menu is generated.