Brushes folder gone

[Lisa_Baudry]

I created a brushes folder with all the brushes I wanted to use for a painting project with a unique name and this has now disappeared from my brushes menu

[Aleke]

Hi @Lisa_Baudry! 😊 Sorry to hear that your brushes folder disappeared.

What version of Photoshop are you using? Do you have a backup of your brushes on your computer? Could you send a screenshot of how your brushes panel looks?

Thank you!

Alek

[Lisa_Baudry]

Hi @Aleke ,
I'm using Photoshop 2025 on a mac os 15.3.2 
The brushes I used came from an assortment of brush folders which have 100s of brushes in them and after testing out alot of brushes,  I selected about 10 to make my life easier while painting this project, I put these brushes in a folder with the project name so that I could use and find them again if I liked that selection. It was intended as a time saving thing, as it takes along time to find brushes and swap from brush to brush as the folders and lists get very long. This worked very well during the project but they dissappeared, maybe after I quit photoshop? Not sure why.
The screen shot of the brushes panel is attached. 

[Glenn 8675309]

ABR files are an industry standard for brushes.  You can just search your computer for all ABR files.

Your screenshot is not working right now. 

[Lisa_Baudry]

Its not that I lost the brushes. I know where these are in the library. They are all in the original files, but I had made an edit of the brushes I wanted to use from various abr files and put them in a folder in photoshop so that I could easily access them. Maybe this isn't something you can do? It worked for the duration of the project, but now I want to edit my project It's going to be hard to remember what they were called and how to find them. Apologies is this is hard to understand. 

The screenshot is apparently doing a virus scan....

[Lisa_Baudry]

I think the missing step for me was not exporting my brushes and saving them, I just thought putting them in a folder was enough.
This youtube tutorial helped me :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXw4K-ANd94

[Trevor.Dennis · Accepted solution]

Hi Lisa

The way it works is when you create a new group and place new or copied presets in it, it should stay there until the next major update.  If you need to keep it, then select your group, and Export it from the Little Cog menu.  This creates the .abr file and keeps them safe going forward.

Creating new presets with preferred settings is perhaps a little confusing as having made the settings, you need to do the New Preset thing again.  Place these presets in your favourites group, and export out to .abr.  The brush engine can be a bit confusing, but it is a lot of fun, and super useful.