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TomHackettPhotography
Known Participant
August 15, 2022
Question

Where did my exported presets go?

  • August 15, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 1136 views

I am running Photoshop 2022 (23.4.2) on Mac (Monrerey 12.5).  I am trying to export presets for safekeeping and to eventually use them in the current Photoshop Beta.

So, I open Photoshop 2022 and click Edit > Presets > Import/Export Presets.  In the Export/Import Presets window, I click on the Export Presets tab.  In the Your Presets panel are a list of presets, some of which I move to the Presets to Export panel.  I now either highlight the presets or I don't (it doesn't seem to matter) and click Export Presets.  
It asks me for a preset folder.  I select Temp Presets, an empty folder I created for this purpose, and click Open.  In response, I get a little window that says "Presets have been successfully exported."
I then look at the Temp Presets folder in Finder (which gives a size of Zero bytes) and find nothing.

What am I doing wrong?

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2 replies

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TomHackettPhotographyAuthor
Known Participant
August 17, 2022

I'm embarrassed to say that I found the resolution of my problem.  Today I did what I should have tried two days ago--I restarted my computer.  The problem disappeared.  Thank you to those who took the time to advise me.  I now have a better understanding of this area of Photoshop.

Kevin Stohlmeyer
Community Expert
Kevin StohlmeyerCommunity Expert
Community Expert
August 15, 2022

What presets are you trying to save specifically?

Did you save your presets first before trying to export? If you didn't they are considered temp files and may not export.

This document explains how to save presets before exporting:

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/preset-migration.html

 

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    TomHackettPhotographyAuthor
    Known Participant
    August 16, 2022

    Rather than deal with a whole bunch of presets, I decided to try exporting one simple preset.

     

    In Photoshop 2022, I created an action set which I called ZZZTom (to make it easy to find). In that action set, I recorded a new action, called ZZZAdj, which just created a solid color adjustment layer filled with red. After verifying that the action worked, I highlighed ZZZTom, clicked on the hamburger in the upper right of the Actions panel and clicked on Save Actions. . . . After saving the action, I looked in Library/ApplicationSupport/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop 2022/Presets/Actions and verified that ZZZTom.atn was saved there.

     

    Next, I followed the source computer steps under “Export and import presets” found on the pagehttps://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/preset-migration.html. These are the procedures I described in the original post. For the export folder I chose /Users/tomhackett/Temp presets. After receiving the message that the export was successful, I inspected the folder and found it empty.

     

    It seems to me that I have followed all of the correct procedures. What went wrong?

     

    T
    TomHackettPhotographyAuthor
    Known Participant
    August 16, 2022

    Curiouser and curiouser!

     

    I decided to try Edit > Presets > Export/Import Presets on a Windows machine. It worked just as I would expect it to from the Adobe documentation.

     

    Back to macOS, I started clean with a new folder I called “Hidden.” I exported an action set and a workspace, and Photoshop said all was well. But I couldn’t find the exported presets under the “Hidden” folder, or anywhere else for that matter. So just for fun, I ran the Export process again, once more using the apparently empty “Hidden” folder. This time, I got the following panel:

     

     

     

    Now it’s telling me there’s an existing folder, but it’s one that I can’t see. So I click “Yes,” and get another warning

    This is good, because it tells me exactly where it intends to put the stuff. Again, I click “Yes,” and again it says it’s successful, and again I can’t find the Exported Presets in the Hidden folder.

     

    Photoshop clearly thinks there’s something there, but Finder can’t find it. Even going to the Terminal application, switching to super user, navigating to the Hidden directory and entering ls -lac

    does not reveal anything but the current and parent directories (. and ..), much less Exported presets.

     

    Having been retired for twelve years now, I’m a little rusty on my Unix, but I’m beginning to think this is not so much a Photoshop problem as a macOS problem. I guess I’ll ask the Apple folks about it.

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