New Mac need help transferring actions

Photoshop – Custom Action File Backup & Migration

Adobe Photoshop actions are stored in the Actions Palette.

The location of the Actions Palette.psp file can be found in the following locations:

Mac:

/Users/username/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop ??? Settings/Actions Palette.psp

Win:

C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Photoshop\???\Adobe Photoshop ??? Settings\Actions Palette.psp

(replace “username” with your user account name and also replace ??? with your version name/number)

Although it is a good idea to setup a regular automated backup of this file* (see below), best practice is to manually save out each action set individually to a .atn (action) file using the menu on the upper right of the action palette window.

*An automated back-up of the Actions Palette.psp file can be created on the Mac OS using Apple Automator or AppleScript, while on MS Windows an xcopy or robocopy command can be placed into a batch script and regularly run by a scheduled task.

There is a script in xtools (ActionsPaletteToFiles.jsx) to automatically export out each action set in the actions palette as individual .atn files, saving the manual labour of individually saving out these assets.

Where should one save these .atn files?

Mac:

/Applications/Adobe Photoshop ???/Presets/Actions

Win:

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop ???\Presets\Actions

C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop ???\Presets\Actions

If an .atn file is saved to the default application/program presets folder as above, the action will be listed and available in the action palette menu. This allows an action to be easily restored if it is removed without having to manually find and load the original .atn file. If there are many actions, this menu may become unwieldy due to the length of the added action sets.

Note: by storing saved action .atn files in this “expected” default application/program location they will not be available to the built in preset migration export tool (edit menu, presets, export/import presets).

For the built-in export/import presets feature to list saved actions for migration, they should be saved to a non-default location – the user level preset folder for actions:

Mac:

Users/username/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop ???/Presets/Actions

Win:

C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop ???\Presets\Actions