Error: Launch plug-in failure for Photoshop Elements in Windows

Here are a few reasons you might be getting a plugin error and how to resolve them. 

If you are running Photoshop Elements, and when you launch your plugin you see this error:

Also, sometimes right after seeing this error, your Photoshop Elements may crash.

Reason 1. You're Missing the Program, but you Have the Plugin file

Make sure you actually have the plugin you are trying to launch installed. Your Photoshop can still have the plugin file, even after you have uninstalled your Topaz program, and so you may be clicking a filter plugin that you do not actually have installed.

If you're trying to launch Studio 2 as a plugin, you should be able to go to where you have it installed, and see something like this:

If you can't find an installation folder, to point to, you can't launch the program as a plugin. Install it to a place that you can find, and set your additional plugins folder to point to a directory above that.

Whenever possible you should always use right-click -> Run as Administrator when running the installer. It is always possible a third-party application like Lightroom could set restrictive permissions on one of its folders and block the installer, so running as Administrator can prevent that.

Reason 2: Your Plugin Preferences Don't Point to the Right Folder

1. Open the 'Edit' menu and select 'Preferences>Plug-ins'

2. Make sure that your plugins preference is actually pointing to a Topaz Labs folder.

Example: DON'T DO THIS

The "Additional Plug-Ins folder" is pointing to something that has no Topaz plugin files.

Example: DON'T DO THIS Do not Install to Microsoft OneDrive

OneDrive is not a Valid Place to install your Topaz software.

A One Drive folder is not a valid path that you can give to Photoshop Elements as your plugin folder.

Instead, it should look something like this:

Note: you have two Topaz Labs folders.

Your Photoshop Elements will only let you have ONE Additional Plug-ins folder.

So if you are unable to launch some of your Topaz plugins, you can try switching between your Topaz Labs and your Topaz Labs LLC folder.

You may have to do this each time you switch between plugins. Note: Non-Elements versions of Photoshop do not have this restriction. Photoshop Elements has this limitation. 

Reason 3. You Are Using an Unsupported Version of Photoshop Elements

Topaz only officially supports Elements, 13, 14, and 15.

However, if you have some other version, fear not, you can still manually set up your plugin configuration yourself.

Just set your Plug-Ins preferences to point a folder that contains all of your Topaz Labs products, or even C:/Program Files as a catch-all.

Reason 4: Your Topaz Registry Entry Has Become Corrupted

To remedy this open the program RegEdit

and find your Topaz program registry entry, and right-click to delete it.