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Known Participant
April 13, 2026
Question

having all presets, actions , bridge workflow and export settings saved in the cloud

  • April 13, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 37 views

With some updates of photoshop actions are lost...to be never found again unless user saved a copy somewhere. I would like all actions, and also bridge workflows etc to be saved in the adobe cloud so that they never get lost.

2 replies

War Unicorn
Community Expert
Community Expert
April 21, 2026

To be honest, I’d rather do the backing up, myself. I have a couple of actions (as well as all my assets) that are saved locally and via my NAS (network-attached storage), setup as a RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks). Several layers of redundancy. I can also initiate a cloud backup at the same time I use the NAS.

 

Of course, it’s not exactly automatic, but a backup could be done automatically, if I wanted. (I don’t, as I don’t leave my laptop on all the time.)

D Fosse
Community Expert
Community Expert
April 13, 2026

Custom actions and brushes should be saved out to .atn and .abr respectively, and you can save those in any cloud service. And a few other settings as well.

 

The problem with most other settings and preferences is that a new Photoshop version may have new code, and the old settings may in fact not mean exactly the same thing in the new version. These things don’t always migrate as they are, at least not without potential issues.

 

There was for a while an option to “export settings”, but it was fairly quickly removed. I suspect for good reasons.

 

In addition, small errors tend to accumulate (since all settings are rewritten on every application exit), and again, that may not surface until a new version brings in new or modified code.

 

Most of the “bugs” reported here are in fact corrupt preferences.

 

The best way to ensure problem-free operation is to start each new version with a fresh Settings folder. You can see that as a nuisance, but you can also see it as cheap insurance and a fresh start.

 

Now, there is an option to migrate settings when installing, in which case I assume any necessary “translation” is executed in the background. Still, it’s not something I recommend, for the same reasons.

GregioriAuthor
Known Participant
April 20, 2026

The problem is you never know which update will make your actions dissapear… Maybe only one update in a year, or even two years, but because you don't know, and photoshop automatically updates you could just, like russion roulette, loose a very important action.

 

like I said, they are just erased, never to be found again...

D Fosse
Community Expert
Community Expert
April 21, 2026

@Gregiori 

You do know.

A major version update, say from 26.11 to 27.0, will start with its own fresh Settings folder.

A minor (dot) version update, say from 27.4 to 27.5, will retain and use the same Settings folder.