Okay, I showed my hidden files in terminal again and went to the location and found no Actions in the file. I was, however, able to make a copy of my actions by saving them, one at a time, to a new file location. So I can make a copy of what I have loaded, but I still don't know where they were being kept after I initially loaded them. And where and what is the default Actions Palette.psp? I found reference to that in other posts but have not located it. And from what others said, it was like a secret vault? I could have misunderstood... Again, thank you for help... I can find all this stuff on a windows computer, but this mac just makes everything harder to find...
By the way, with CC, as far as I can tell, you just accept updates and the new program overwrites the old one. It's not like the old days where you get to keep earlier versions on your computer... it's just Photoshop CC... Fragments of what you had are in these hidden files, but you don't have the program. And I added all of these actions recently as I am finally trying to commit to Photoshop after using PSE for years. In the past I just used Photoshop for things that PSE didn't have, when I needed them.
Outfox, I hope that the following explains the locations and reasoning behind where actions are saved and stored:
Prepression: Photoshop – Custom Action File Backup & Migration
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
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 Action Palette.psp file can be created on the Mac OS using Apple Automator, 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 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 the length of the added action sets.
Note: by storing saved action .atn files in this “expected” default 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
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