User Center

The User Center is your account page: everything Photizon keeps for you, on one page with five tabs — Profile, Security, Subscription, Saved Designs and My Materials. Most of this page is about Saved Designs, because that is where the behaviour is worth documenting; the last three sections cover the rest.

Anyone with a free account can see their library — open, search, export and delete what is in it. Putting things into it is what Plus is for: saving designs, editing them, defining materials. If you have never subscribed, your library is simply empty; if you subscribed once and stopped, everything you stored is still yours to read, export and delete — the details are in If your subscription lapses at the end of this page.

A saved design is the complete state of a tool: every layer, every parameter, every setting — the same information a share link carries. Saving works in every tool with a Save button.

Press Save (or Ctrl/Cmd-S) in any tool with a Save button. The first time, you will be asked for a name; after that, Save updates the design you are working on.

• The tool remembers which design is open. The design’s name is shown in the tool, with a marker when you have unsaved changes. Reopening a design from your library continues that same design — Save updates it rather than creating a copy.
• Save vs. Save as new. Save overwrites the open design. The small menu next to Save has Save as new…, which always asks for a name and creates a separate copy.
• Names are unique. If you pick a name you have already used, we ask what you meant: overwrite the existing design, or keep both by saving as “Name (2)”.
• Share links do not touch your library. The link you copy carries the setup itself — whoever opens it gets your parameters in a fresh session, not access to your saved design. Sharing never lets someone else edit your library.

Once a design has been saved, the tool backs up your unsaved changes automatically as you edit — a few seconds after you pause.

Here is exactly what that does and does not do:

• It protects work you have not saved yet. If the tab crashes, the browser closes, or your laptop dies, your latest edits are waiting when you reopen the design: “You have unsaved changes from 7 minutes ago. Restore them?”
• It is not a save. The design in your library only changes when you press Save. The backup lives alongside the design, and the tool shows “Unsaved changes · backed up” so the difference is always visible. If you decide against your edits, just do not save them.
• Restoring puts your edits back on screen — it still does not save them. Choosing Load them shows you the backed-up work so you can look at it and decide; the design stays marked as having unsaved changes until you press Save. Choosing Discard deletes the backup. If you load the backup and then walk away without saving, you will be asked again next time — nothing is lost by not deciding.
• It only works on designs that exist. A brand-new setup you have never saved has no design to back up onto. Save early — give it a name the moment it is worth keeping — and auto-save covers you from then on.
• Undo still works normally. Loading a backup goes through the same channel as undo/redo, so Ctrl/Cmd-Z behaves as you would expect.

Every design keeps a history: each time you save, the state you are replacing is kept as a version. A design holds up to 20 versions; when the list is full, older automatic entries are dropped first — versions from your own explicit saves are kept in preference to automatic ones.

The history lives on your account page, on the design’s row in Saved Designs — open Version history to see the list, newest first.

• Restore makes a version the current design, in one step. Before it does, the state it is replacing is itself recorded as a version — so a restore is always undoable. You cannot lose the present by revisiting the past.
• Editing in two places at once is safe. If the same design was saved somewhere else — another tab, another machine — since you opened it, your backup cannot be recorded against a state that has moved, and the tool tells you instead of overwriting quietly. Your work is on screen and nobody else’s was touched; you choose whether to continue from the version that was saved elsewhere, or to save yours over it.

Three ways to keep a growing library findable. All three are edited from the design’s row in Saved Designs; changing them never touches the design’s parameters.

• Folders are flat — no folders inside folders. The folder bar above your library filters it; every design is in one folder or in Unfiled. Deleting a folder keeps the designs in it — they return to All designs; the confirmation says so before anything happens.
• Tags are short labels shown on the design’s card — every tag, always visible. Up to 20 tags per design, up to 32 characters each; duplicates that differ only in capitalization are treated as the same tag, keeping the spelling you typed first.
• Notes are free text on a design — up to 2,000 characters for whatever the parameters cannot say: why this variant exists, what the fab run showed, what to try next. The card shows the first two lines; click to read or edit the rest.

The search box above your library matches against name, tool, tags and notes as you type. It searches the designs already on the page, so it is instant, and it works for every signed-in user — search is not a paid feature.

Star the designs you keep returning to and they gather at the top of your library. The order updates the next time you open the list — starring does not shuffle rows while you are looking at them.

Duplicate on a design’s row creates a copy named like “Name (2)”, carrying the parameters, the note, the tags and the folder — everything except the star, so your starred shortlist stays the designs you actually chose. Duplicate before a risky rework and the original stays untouched.

Three separate exports, for three different jobs:

• Designs as JSON. Every design exports as a JSON file — from its row, or Export all for the whole library at once. The file includes the design’s version history, so an export is a genuine offline copy of everything the library holds about it. This works for any signed-in user, subscribed or not.
• Materials as JSON. Custom materials export the same way — per material or all of them — also for any signed-in user.
• Figures for publication. Every plot has an Export figure… button: SVG, PNG or PDF, at the plot’s on-screen size, single-column (3.5 in) or double-column (7 in) journal width, or custom dimensions; PNG at 150, 300 or 600 dpi; transparent background if you want it. This is a Plus feature. Data export is not behind it — CSV export of the numbers stays free with a free account, exactly as before.

The honest version, in one table. When Plus ends — cancelled, expired, card failed — nothing you stored is taken away. What stops is adding and changing.

Your work is never held hostage: read, export and delete stay yours for as long as your account exists. Resubscribe and everything continues where it left off — same designs, same history, same folders.

My Materials is the second half of your library: optical constants you define yourself, for glasses, coatings and films that are not in the public database. Four kinds — Sellmeier, Cauchy, tabulated, or constant. Cauchy, tabulated and constant materials carry k as well as n; a Sellmeier material is index only. You can define up to 500 of them.

Once defined, a material appears in the material selector of the tools that offer custom materials, alongside the public database. Defining and editing are Plus; everything else is not, which is the part worth knowing before you cancel: materials you defined stay viewable and stay usable in simulations, and they export as JSON — per material or all at once — for any signed-in user.

The Subscription tab shows what you are on and what it lets you do. If you hold more than one subscription — say Plus and a Pro product — each is listed on its own row with its own status, billing interval and renewal date.

• Everything self-serve happens in the billing portal, opened from this tab: cancelling, changing your payment card, switching between monthly and annual, and downloading invoices. No email, no form, no retention call.
• If a renewal payment fails, a banner on this tab says so and links you to fix it. Your library is not touched: a failed payment changes what you can write, never what you already stored.
• Cancelling takes effect at the end of the term you already paid for, not immediately, and what happens after that is the table in If your subscription lapses.

Prices, refunds and the full set of billing questions live on the pricing page, which is where they stay current.

Profile and Security are your sign-in details: your name and email on the first, your password, connected accounts, active sessions and two-factor authentication on the second. Both are handled by our identity provider, Clerk, and rendered inside the User Center — changes you make there take effect immediately.

Deleting your account — from your account settings, or by asking us at support@photizon.com — removes everything keyed to you: saved designs and their version history, custom materials, folders, usage records and subscription references. It is not reversible, so export first if you want a copy; the JSON exports above are the way. What we store and why is set out in the Privacy Policy.