Is there some special technique involved in using knoll light factory spectacular? I created a black layer and applied a particle filter to it, then tried to apply light factory spectacular, and after trying several variations, including putting an adjustment layer over the black layer and applying spectacular to it, I have not been able to make it work. Has anybody else had this problem?

Have you watched the excellent tutorial by John Dickinson? It's at http://redgiantsoftware2.com/Downloads/videos/knoll/knoll_gettingstarted.mov
There is a section dedicated to Spectacular