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vco_se11
Participant
December 14, 2025
解決済み

All of my brushes have disappeared from the brushes panel -- and all other presets

  • December 14, 2025
  • 返信数 10.
  • 1345 ビュー

I just noticed that all of my brushes, including ones I have made, purchased or added from the "Get more brushes" menu item, have all disappeared from Photoshop. I can add some legacy brushes but they are nothing to do with the brushes I had made or added myself.  I have my preferences in Creative Cloud set to migrate presets to new versions, but I don't even think this disappearance coincides with an update.

I went to my Preferences folder in my library (on a mac) and tried copying the brushes.psp file from Photoshop 2025 to the 2026 folder, and then reopened Photoshop but it was back to the bare minimum default brushes again -- even the legacy things disappeared. Is there anything I can do to restore my brushes? I did not export them to an .abr before this happened as nothing like this has happened in the 30 years I've been using photoshop and I didn't realise my presets could vanish.

Looking around I see that all my patterns and colour palettes have also disappeared. Please tell me there is some kind of fix! With the prices we are paying for this software it's not acceptable that a bug just wipes out all of that work. 

 

This is Photoshop 2026, 27.1.0 release, macOS Sequoia 15.7.2

解決に役立った回答 Earth Oliver

Yes, this has been an issue for DECADES and Adobe refuses to do anything about it. Simply updating the app can result in the loss of ALL Brushes and Actions. It's a horrible user experience and we've been begging them to do something about since the 90's. For whatever reason, they just DON'T CARE.

返信数 10

E
e22125974z9d1
Participant
December 16, 2025

Help! 

 

I just opened photoshop and ALL of my brushes have disppeared, including all the defaults. 

 

Problem is I've gotten used to using select brushes and am in the middle of FIVE projects that have to match and I can't be spending time troubleshooting or finding new brushes to match my style. From what I can tell, Photoshop hasn't updated or anything so I don't understand why this has happened??? 

 

Thank you! 

 

 


 

Claire H.
Community Manager
Claire H.Community Manager
Community Manager
December 16, 2025

Hi @e22125974z9d1, welcome to the Photoshop community forums! Sorry to hear those brushes disappeared on you. Let's try a few things to see if we can restore them.
1. Open Window > Brushes. Click the panel menu (≡) and choose Legacy Brushes to re‑add the classic packs.

2. Try Window > Brushes > (≡) > Import Brushes…, then select your saved .abr files.

https://adobe.ly/3N3pwp7
3. Reset the Brush tool: with the Brush tool active, open the mini menu (gear icon) and choose Reset Tool or Reset All Tools.
4. Try manually resetting your Photoshop preferences: https://adobe.ly/4p3vTGz. Remember to back up your settings before doing the preference reset: https://adobe.ly/44z66OZ.
Let me know if any of these steps work for you! If not, we can continue to troubleshoot. I hope this helps! ^CH
E
e22125974z9d1
Participant
December 16, 2025

Hello! This just happened to me! How did it get resolved because I'm in the middle of FIVE projects and they all need to match! 

 

Thanks!

 

V
vco_se11作成者
Participant
December 18, 2025

I'm so sorry but for me there was no fix. Everything was permanently deleted. If you have a previous version of Photoshop backed up in Time Machine, that might have your presets, or possibly in your Library folder under Applicaton Support/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop [year]/Presets -- look at the folders for previous installations (this is on a mac, I'm sure the equivalent exists on Windows). But for me those folders were just empty. I had another computer with Photoshop that had my presets from about a year ago so I exported brushes from there and some color palettes. But I'm sorry there was no solution (or explanation) from Adobe.

Earth Oliver
Earth Oliver解決！
Legend
December 16, 2025

Yes, this has been an issue for DECADES and Adobe refuses to do anything about it. Simply updating the app can result in the loss of ALL Brushes and Actions. It's a horrible user experience and we've been begging them to do something about since the 90's. For whatever reason, they just DON'T CARE.

    V
    vco_se11作成者
    Participant
    December 16, 2025

    I've been lucky for 30 years! 

    Stephen Marsh
    Community Expert
    Stephen MarshCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    December 16, 2025
    quote

    I've been lucky for 30 years! 


    By @vco_se11


    Many have not been so lucky!

     

    There are countless topics on the forum where users have lost the contents of their various .psp preference files, for whatever reason, and have no proper assets saved, such as .atn action files, or .abr brush files etc.


    This has been repeated so many times that I wrote the following for actions, however it's just as applicable to brushes, patterns etc:

     

    https://prepression.blogspot.com/2017/01/photoshop-custom-action-file-backup.html

     

    Trevor.Dennis
    Community Expert
    Trevor.DennisCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    December 15, 2025

    I'm sorry, I don't know the Mac file structure, but with Windows we can see previous version settings and presets.  If you lose presets you will very likely find them in the immediate previous version.  It only goes back one version before they are no longer there.  

     

    Unfortenately this will not include new presets added in the current version, but they should still be there in the current version settings file along with Preferences etc.  It would a good idea to group and export new presets, and place the resulting files (.abr for brush etc.) in a safe location.

     

    I keep all such presets in Windows My Documents folders, and place shortcuts to those folders in the Photoshop presets folder.  This means I can share assets between all installed versions (current release, beta, and 22.2 for 3D and Lighting Effects), and keep them safe from major version update disasters.

     

    Good luck, and let us know if you find your presets.  This link might help

    https://helpx.adobe.com/nz/photoshop/kb/preference-file-names-locations-photoshop.html

    V
    vco_se11作成者
    Participant
    December 15, 2025

    Thank you so much for trying to help, but the presets folders in previous versions in my Library folders are all empty. Adobe support had me install 4 previous versions of Photoshop (each time I had to restart and open the earlier version to see if my presets would be there) -- possibly those installs may have wiped out previous folders? I'm not sure. But there is nothing. Very grateful for your answer though, thank you

    Trevor.Dennis
    Community Expert
    Trevor.DennisCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    December 16, 2025

    That's a real pity because that's exactly what will have happened.  Reinstalling the previous versions will very likely have lost any saved presets.  Is there anything we can help with to replace those presets?  How much do you remember, or are they something you made, so are unique to you?  when you do get back up to speed — especially if these are important assets that you created — definitely think about moving them to a safer location that _you_ control.  It's not a case of backing them up.  It's more an alternative form of asset management that gives you peace of mind.  I don't do it myself, but now I think of it we seem to get so much online storeage nowadays, I think I'll upload my Adobe assets to cloud storage.  

     

    I'd wish you luck, but I suspect you have plum run out of it. 😞

    V
    vco_se11作成者
    Participant
    December 15, 2025

    Thanks again. I think this has no actual solution. And my time machine has /Applications excluded (not sure if that's default or if I did that years ago to save space). Who knew that all my stuff was stored in the app like that. I have a backup machine with photoshop installed so I will manually export all my brushes, patterns, palettes etc from there and it means I've only last what's changed in the past year. But now I can never trust Photoshop again. I never realised this was a risk. Adobe support has been completely useless as well. If they want to charge such expensive subscriptions, I think Adobe owe us better support. 

    V
    vco_se11作成者
    Participant
    December 14, 2025

    Interestingly -- just went into Creative Cloud. I have the option to migrate presets checked to on for updating Photoshop (as I thought), and the option to remove old versions _unchecked_. But Photoshop 2025 is not in my applications folder.

    V
    vco_se11作成者
    Participant
    December 14, 2025

    Hi there, thank you for the answers -- I really appreciate people replying. I don't think this is my fault to be fair -- I do absolutely back up my mac -- but I'm not sure what to do. How do I rescue my presets from my backups? Should I reinstall Photoshop 2025? Or revert to that from Time Machine? 

     

    To C0ppert0p, thank you for trying to help -- I think it is perfectly correct to call this a bug. There is software to migrate my presets from one version of Photoshop to the new one, and it clearly failed, and erased all my presets. It is not my user error or a hardware failure -- the software has a flaw and does not do what it should do. I will definitely find the settting to preserve previous versions from now on. To be clear I did not delete any folders or uninstall anything. One day I opened Photoshop and my presets were there. A few days later I opened Photoshop and all my presets had been erased.

    C
    C0ppert0p
    Participant
    December 15, 2025
    Re-instaling 2025 won't bring back your brushes. because the
    custom brushes are not part of the base install. In my opinion the best
    solution would be to restore 2025 from time-machine, and then move the
    brushes to 2026.
    D Fosse
    Community Expert
    D FosseCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    December 14, 2025

    This doesn't happen on its own. But brushes and indeed all settings are version specific, and stored in your user account separate from the program files. So this happened in the update from v26 to v27.

     

    Yes, the unpleasant answer: always save out your custom brushes to .abr and actions to .atn-files and keep them in a safe place.

     

    The main problem here is that automatic updates are enabled by default, and you're not getting any advance notice. I've always meant that automatic updates should be off by default, so when the update notice comes you have time to prepare. Any experienced user turns off auto updates. If you want auto updates, you can make that informed choice yourself.

     

    There's also an option to keep the old version installed (which most of us also do) - but again, in an automatic update you're not getting that.

    C
    C0ppert0p
    Participant
    December 14, 2025

    I can only assume that you are not backing up your mac, since that is the very first thing I would have done, were I to lose some software.

    What bug are you referring to? Did you just upgrade to a new version of Photoshop? Typically, "bugs" don't do the sort of thing you are describing. Uninstalling Photoshop would do it. Accidentallly deleting the brush folders would do it. (although the latest version of Tahoe, makes that last one difficultt to so). A corrupted disk/ssd could cause that to happen. In all these scanarios, restoring the data from a backup is realistically the only way to fix your issue. Sorry

    A
    aydın383399585l57
    December 14, 2025

    Omg! It is like nightmare!

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