For probably the 20th+ time within a year and a half... reverted tool presets.

Hey, sorry for the late reply,

A few days ago, I tried using Actions to load brushes, but I think because I loaded them with BrushBox while recording an action, nothing happened. D'oh.

I need to try again, recording Ps' standard way of importing presets. if all goes well, I will try to remember to let you know!

However, I noticed another interesting correlation that may allay some concern for you guys, and I noticed it when I caught myself doing something quite mindlessly. Now I don't think it has been the issue 100% of the time, but I will usually have Ps up all day after loading it and close it while I shut down my main computer, because it's quite slow to close the program. Extremely foolish of me! I made absolutely sure after that that I waited until it was totally shut down, and behold, my problem seems to be allayed for now!

Again, this seems like a reasonable cause for corrupted tool presets, but again, I believe it happened on my older machine too when I used Ps on there. I still think it was a lack of memory, with the computer having 32 bit architecture and only 4GB of RAM, likely sharing it with a host of other applications. Who knows.

Anyway, I will try to do those Action things correctly, and soon. Until then, you can assume that my problem was fixed by remedying my own mindlessness for the time. Apologies for any perhaps false alarms! If my problem does persist outside of my ignorance, then I will try to repost here and let you know.

Thanks again!

-Jon

Well well well!

Today my tool presets have once again vanished; this time, my BrushBox tool presets have not.

The first time I organized them, I was organizing tool presets that where loaded via Photoshop's standard method in the first place, however long ago that was. Since BrushBox depended on these (I think), it lost all of the tool presets when Photoshop did.

The second time I organized them, I re-imported the tool presets using BrushBox only, completely independent of Photoshop's method. I saved them all into groups, so when I lost them all today, BrushBox still kept a hold of them, right as I left them. Holy cats.

Thinking back on the readme, it says to not use Photoshop's preset manger. I guess I didn't think I was, but if I was somehow accessing it indirectly, I think I know why.

Conclusion: BrushBox has saved my sanity. Thank you all for your time in replying, and thanks to Derrick for this extension!

Thanks for chiming in!

"BrushBox does not delete presets unless the user specifically requests it to, by either clicking the trash icon or right-clicking presets or groups and selecting the delete option.  BrushBox also doesn't reset presets (return to default) unless selected from the menu.  When these actions are taken, it calls Photoshop's own scripting system."

This is all true. Although, in my response to Trevor.Dennis, I did have what seemed to be some odd indexing(?) issue just one time. But other than that, BrushBox deletes as intended.

"One of the most important questions is whether they're using other actions/scripts/extensions as JJMack suggests.  Script and extension authors come up with very creative ways to interact with Photoshop, especially if that interaction is with the preset system. BrushBox gets around this by reading .ABR and .TPL files directly, but I've seen some extensions that use methods which actually load/unload presets in Photoshop in order to get their data."

For fear, I will abstain from those kinds of extensions.
In my response to JJMack, I've had this issue since my first plugin, Coolorus 2, which may or may not access Photoshop's preset system. I just don't see how, but you never know. I really it's that, though.

"Furthermore, the way in which Photoshop store your presets between loads seems very problematic.  When Photoshop exits, provided it didn't crash, it saves out your presets to files named Brushes.psp and ToolPresets.psp deep in a user-data folder on your hard drive.  When Photoshop opens, it reads these files back in.  Now, if anything went amiss when it was saving out these files, such as a PS crash or extension blocked the operation or maybe some other OS related issue, then these files are corrupt and on the next PS load, all presets are reset back to the default set.  I've heard several accounts of this from my users, and it's always on Windows machines."

Aha! Thank you for this bit of information, this is great. And yes, I feel all of this. Photoshop has been ​pretty​ good about not crashing on me, but it still does occasionally. It kind of recovers my documents... at least one of them, generally.

"I am certainly not insisting that BrushBox is completely innocent at all times, I just have not found any evidence that ties it to Photoshop losing its own presets. BrushBox functions basically as a window into what is loaded in Photoshop, and it only manipulates what is loaded through Photoshop's scripting system if the user asks it to. Unless a user action is taken, BrushBox doesn't do anything."

It's quite a stable plugin, actually! And no, it does not cause the presets to vanish. It keeps all of my folders, but the folders are just empty, and that’s nothing it can control. I've re-organized everything, and this time, I have absolutely saved ALL my folders as packs of tool and brush presets, all using BrushBox. Iirc, because I'm not at the other computer right now, BrushBox allows you to import several preset packs at once: If so, this relieves a lot of headache that doing them one by one using Photoshop’s standard method. If not, it's still a great plugin, and I don’t have to recreate the folders anyway, so it’s still good.

"Also, according to W3R3W00F this problemt has been going on for a year and a half... which would predate BrushBox by about a year.  I've heard this from some other users as well, that this has been an intermittent issue happening for quite some time.  Leda (who handles BrushBox customer support) experienced her presets being reset completely as well, and that happened to her a couple years ago."

Thanks again for the reply, and also the much needed plugin!

Thanks for chiming in!

"BrushBox does not delete presets unless the user specifically requests it to, by either clicking the trash icon or right-clicking presets or groups and selecting the delete option.  BrushBox also doesn't reset presets (return to default) unless selected from the menu.  When these actions are taken, it calls Photoshop's own scripting system."

This is all true. Although, in my response to Trevor.Dennis, I did have what seemed to be some odd indexing(?) issue just one time. But other than that, BrushBox deletes as intended.

"One of the most important questions is whether they're using other actions/scripts/extensions as
JJMack suggests.  Script and extension authors come up with very creative ways to interact with Photoshop, especially if that interaction is with the preset system. BrushBox gets around this by reading .ABR and .TPL files directly, but I've seen some extensions that use methods which actually load/unload presets in Photoshop in order to get their data."

For fear, I will abstain from those kinds of extensions.
In my response to JJMack, 've had this issue since my first plugin, Coolorus 2, which may or may not access Photoshop's preset system. I just don't see how, but you never know.

"Furthermore, the way in which Photoshop store your presets between loads seems very problematic.  When Photoshop exits, provided it didn't crash, it saves out your presets to files named Brushes.psp and ToolPresets.psp deep in a user-data folder on your hard drive.  When Photoshop opens, it reads these files back in.  Now, if anything went amiss when it was saving out these files, such as a PS crash or extension blocked the operation or maybe some other OS related issue, then these files are corrupt and on the next PS load, all presets are reset back to the default set.  I've heard several accounts of this from my users, and it's always on Windows machines."

Aha! Thank you for this bit of information, this is great! And yes, I feel all of this. Photoshop has been ​pretty​ good about not crashing on me, but it still does occasionally. It kind of recovers my documents... at least one of them, generally.

"I am certainly not insisting that BrushBox is completely innocent at all times, I just have not found any evidence that ties it to Photoshop losing its own presets. BrushBox functions basically as a window into what is loaded in Photoshop, and it only manipulates what is loaded through Photoshop's scripting system if the user asks it to. Unless a user action is taken, BrushBox doesn't do anything."

It's quite a stable plugin, actually! And no, it does not cause the presets to vanish. It keeps all of my folders, but the folders are just empty, and that’s nothing it can control. I've re-organized everything, and this time, I have absolutely saved ALL my folders as packs of tool and brush presets, all using BrushBox. Iirc, because I'm not at the other computer right now, BrushBox allows you to import several preset packs at once: If so, this relieves a lot of headache that doing them one by one using Photoshop’s standard method. If not, it's still a great plugin, and I don’t have to recreate the folders anyway, so it’s still a good deal.

I like BrushBox, but it can get its knickers in a twist, and is likely behind your issue.  Are you strictly using the BrushBox interface to control your brush sets?  It doesn't like you alternating between Photoshop's native system and BrushBox.

Email Derrick Barth or Leda, or maybe Derrick will respond via this thread (he will get an email notification via the link to his profile.).

Not sure if this helps or not, however you can record the loading of a tool preset into an action. So an action could be created to re-import all of the saved tool preset .tpl files for you.

It is very easy for an Add-on like an action or scripts to delete loaded tool presets, reset tool  presets etc.  To me it sound like  an  action, script or plug-in you use occasionally is using Photoshop's Presets manager and reset your tool Presets so the one you loaded are not longer loaded. It may delete all loaded presets an than  loads some Adobe tool presets so it can use then confident that they have not been replace with other tool presets using the same names as Adobe's presets names. Review the Add-on you have installed that you occasionally use.

You need to find out when or what is resetting your loaded Tools presets. Not all problems are Adobe's  I do not work for Adobe and I do not feel Adobe support is what it should be.  Sill I have created a number of bugs of my own and Adobe Has added bugs that brake add-on I have made for Photoshop.  So I still use CC 2014.