How To Back up My Ps Brushes Before Update to Ps 2025?

[Fotomaker01RA]

I work on a Win 11 Pro PC.

I want to back up all my Ps Brushes before updating from Ps 2024 to Ps 2025. And, I want to back them up to a folder on my PC that is not in the Adobe presets file hierarchy on my C: drive.

I know there's an "Export Brushes" option in Ps under the brush tips panel under the Settings asterisk.

Here's the key background info & my question. I have a ton of brushes (Adobe, Web, custom that I've created). I have them organized into topline folders and multiple sub-folders under the topline folders. The sub-folders are where my actual brushes reside. If I click on a topline folder name and then Export will that capture all the sub-folders and the specific brushes (.abr's) within them?

I want to retain the organizational structure and not lose any of the individual brushes when creating brush backups. If I have to back up all sub-folders and brushes individually, I think Adobe will be up to Ps 2026 before I get that finished. If I only must click/export the topline folders, then I have about 10 categories (with multiple sub-categories each) of brushes to export.

Thx! I hope that makes sense .... I hope no one says I have too many brushes!   😉

[Trevor.Dennis]

That's exactly what I do.  My Photoshop assets are in My Docs folders with shortcuts to those folders placed in the presets folders.

C:\Users\[Your User Name]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop 2025\Presets\Brushes

If you do forget and find you have lost your presets, then you should find that the previous version with still have some content, but it only goes back one major version

If you create new brush .abr groups and export them, then they will be saved to the Photoshop presets\brushes folder, so you'll need to move then to your new central location manually.

https://helpx.adobe.com/nz/photoshop/kb/preference-file-names-locations-photoshop.html

[Stephen Marsh]

Don't forget to save any custom actions to .atn file:

https://prepression.blogspot.com/2017/01/photoshop-custom-action-file-backup.html

[Trevor.Dennis]

I'd say that Actions are the things I have lost most often with updates.  It can be scary if you have a lot of them, so check Stephen's links for sure if you use them.

[lvartist]

Screenshot of your post regarding the location of brushes, ETC,

When I open "Brushes" the folder is empty.  Likewise every folder is empty. I have at least a thousand brushes in CC 26.2.  Many are my custom brushes.  Acccording to the "brushes" folder  I have no brushes.

In the VIEW menu of file manager all hiden files/folders are shown.

Why is the "brushes" folder and all other folders empty?  

Michael

[Trevor.Dennis]

Navigate to the Appdata\Roaming\Adobe folder, and search for *.abr

When you find them, right click on one of them and choose Open File Location

Copy to the new central location folder.

Go back one step in the folder tree so you can right click that folder, and choose Create Shortcut

Note: You might need to click on Show More to see that option.

Move the shortcut to 

C:\Users\[Your User Name]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop 2025\Presets\Brushes

If you have the beta version installed, copy the shortcut to its Presets\Brushes folder

Note: you might have to Make Hidden Items and file extensions viewable in File Explorer

Shout if you still have problems.

Note: if you type the '@' you'll see the user IDs of the people posting to this thread. If you click on my ID I will get a notification so I won't miss your reply.

[lvartist]

Trevor.Dennis

That worked ! I probably have 50 to 75K hours working professionally in PSD in the POD market.  But all those hours would never have led me to your solution. You are a real community expert.  

As an added bonus, I also have BrushBox 2.5.4, your solution automatically adds the abr brush to BB.  Very helpful.

Thanks for the solution.  I will be saving your reply to a permanent text file for future use.

Michael

[Trevor.Dennis]

I use BrushBox (sometimes).  That is to say I have it installed, but don't seem to get round to opening it very often.   DerrIck Barth has been helpful to people on this forum in the past.  I also bought a license for the other one  (Brusherator ?) but never really liked that one and don't have it installed. 

I just checked and I have 2.5.0 installed, so I'll update and see what has changed.

[Trevor.Dennis]

BTW  The wee toolbar bottom right is for Lazy Nezumi Pro.  That's the best Photoshop add on bar none IMO, and essential if you do a lot of brush work. (and are using Windows and have a tablet).

[lvartist]

Downloaded Lazy Nezumi Pro 15 day trial.  Nice addon.  I will be purchasing.

Brusherator.......is not a brush manager....even the developer in a blog addmited that it is not a brush mgr.  I tried it in 2023....worthless IMO.

BrushBox.    I use it and still like it.  Derrick does not seem interested in future improvements.  I told him about 1 1/2 years ago that he needs to charge for any major updates.  Too many cheap charlies who think software should be free.  

Thanks for the Lazy.......tip.  

[Stephen Marsh]

Screenshot of your post regarding the location of brushes, ETC,

When I open "Brushes" the folder is empty.  Likewise every folder is empty. I have at least a thousand brushes in CC 26.2.  Many are my custom brushes.  Acccording to the "brushes" folder  I have no brushes.

In the VIEW menu of file manager all hiden files/folders are shown.

Why is the "brushes" folder and all other folders empty?  

Michael

By @lvartist

This is because there are multiple locations: Preferences, Application and User default locations.

Preference .psp files should be considered temporary and may be subject to corruption or loss, which is why making an explicit save to .abr, .atn etc is strongly recommended. The preference files hold new, unsaved presets, so it's a good habit to always manually save preset files whenever one creates or edits a brush, action or other preset.

Brushes - Contains the list of all the brushes loaded in the Brushes panel:

Users\[user name]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop [version]\Adobe Photoshop [version] Settings\Brushes.psp (note the preferences .psp extension)

Brushes - User Saved presets, the default location choosing Save Preset saves to:

Users\[user name]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop [version]\Presets\Brushes\

(If you have saved your brushes, then they will have a .abr extension)

Brushes - Application presets:

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop [version]\Presets\Brushes

(If you have saved your brushes, then they will have a .abr extension)

I wrote a Photoshop script to facilitate opening up these various directories so that manual backups of the contents can be created:

https://github.com/MarshySwamp/Backup-Photoshop-Settings-Universal

[lvartist]

Downloaded your script.  Ran it.  It did not produce the results shown in the script.  See attaached partial screen shot of the script.

The script did not produce the photoshop settings data. What do you suggest?  

[Stephen Marsh]

@lvartist - From your reply it's hard to comment. It should just open 3 Finder or Windows Explorer windows.

[lvartist]

Here is the file I downloaded.  Is it the correct file?

When I open the file here is the result:  If I try to execute the " file " Open Photoshop Presets & Setting Folders" I get exactly what my Dec 20 post shows.  NO script runs that produces what you claim should show in any Windows Explorer Window.  Double clicking on that files produces this:

[Stephen Marsh]

@lvartist 

You show a .zip compressed archive file. You need to decompress the .zip file and extract the .jsx file and execute that.

https://prepression.blogspot.com/2017/11/downloading-and-installing-adobe-scripts.html

You can also visit the raw code page and save/download that page to your computer, renaming from a .txt extension to .jsx

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MarshySwamp/Backup-Photoshop-Settings-Universal/refs/heads/main/Op...