My photoshop brushes keep on disappearing

[daninugroho]

I made my own brushes i use for lineart and colouring but whenever i turn off the computer, the brushes get deleted or they disappear. This has happened to me multiple times and I really don't want to create the same brushes over and over again. I saved the brush presets and all, i also named them, They do appear in the brush presets but whenever i quit photoshop, it disappears.

[Trevor.Dennis · Accepted solution]

After defining a few brush presets, go Edit > Presets > Preset Manager. 

Select Brushes from the dropdown at the top.

Select your new brushes, (they will have a blue outline) and Save Set

Where do you put your brushes?

What operating system are you using?

What version of Photoshop?

This tells you the file locations.

Photoshop CS6 preference file functions, names, locations

If you are using Windows, the App Data path is probably best, but you need to make hidden files viewable from File Explorer

C:\Users\Your User Name\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CC 2017\Presets\Brushes

[Shayde48]

My brushes are already saved on my laptop, but every time I load them they disappear again. I've had some of them loaded for over a year with no problems. Now I look like a total noob when I open my menu 😉

[Shadako]

I have the same thing happening since a week, for no reason whatsoever?? Everything worked fine all year long, and suddenly, without any warning or without me changing ANYTHING, every change I ever made is gone. Brushes are gone, Swatches are gone, custom Shapes, ... everything is just disappeared. I spent the whole night re-organizing everything and loading in everything I still had... saved it all. It was there in PS and the preset folder... Now I turn my PC on again, and everything is GONE. Just gone? In PS and in the presets folders. Does anybody have a solution for this? I need to work, my client is getting really impatient and me leaving PS/my PC turned on for the whole week so I dont have to re-do everything each time PS closes/opens again can't be the soution...? If anybody got a fix, I'd appreciate it so much. 😞

[Carmen Ursino]

I had the same problem too. I don't know what to do!!! 

[nancycoste]

I am having the exact same problem...!!!!!!!!!! cant find them in the presets - brushes in application , nor in the library - adobe - photoshtop 2020 cc - brushes-    nothing to find...same when I go back in time machine...this is horrible!!!!!

[Birdie2]

I am having the same issue. Load brushes only to have them reset back to default brushes every time I close Photoshop. Ditto for patterns, swatches, etc. I am very frustrated about this. 

[Anna Laura262092565iam]

I am having the same issue, but it happens every year or so. I spend a lot of time selecting and adapting my brushes from the brush sets, and then all of a sudden they are gone... 

[Cdevarr]

Has anyone found a fix for this yet? I just don't get why you can't save your brushes. I keep my brushes saved and just import my whole set everytime if i need them but I get tired of doing this. 

[Trevor.Dennis]

I wonder if the people having a problem with this have been using Preset Syncing, and it has turned off?  

Try opening Preferences > General, and checking Syncing

It might be that the missing presets are there on the Adobe server, and will appear the next time you restart Photoshop.  Note:  I have had issues with syncing causing Photoshop to take a long time to close, and even locking up, so I keep it turned off.  I like to have my presets in the Appdata file path so I can keep a copy of it.

[Lea27307966dyn4]

Preset Syncing does not seem to be under this tab any longer.  

[Trevor.Dennis]

Hi Lea.  Unfortunately, Adobe decided to remove preset syncing, and that function is no longer available.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-beta-discussions/preset-syncing-will-be-removed-from-photos...

I have a sort of cut down version that I use for various reasons.  If we take brush presets, I was getting fed up with adding presets to the current full release version, and not having them in the current beta version. Plus there times when the brush presets did not survive a major version update.  So I now keep them in a folder in Windows My Documents, and I have a shortcut to that folder in the presets folder:

C:\Users\[your user name]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop 2024\Presets\Brushes

File locations for Windows and Mac can be found here:

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

Similarly, some of my older plugins never show after a major update.  These are several Flaming Pear, plus Redfield Fractalius.  So I keep the .8BF files for those plugins in a My Docs folder, and place a shortcut to them in 

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop 2024\Plug-ins

If you ever have trouble remembering, just search your boot drive for .8BF  and right click a result and chose Open File Location.

A huge advantage f thios approach is that you are never going to lose your presets, and we see plent of posts on this forum from people who who have done just that.  We usually send them to the appdata folders where some previous version files will be. 

Brush presets are still going to be in the previous version preset folder, and custom workspaces in the previous Photoshop Settings folder

C:\Users\[your use name]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop 2023\Adobe Photoshop 2023 Settings\WorkSpaces (Modified)

This does not work via the Internet for systems in different locations, but does work over a network (although I wouldn't want the delays a network might possibly introduce.  So I don't know if that helps at all?  It's just a stratagy I use to deal with two versions of Photoshop, if you have the beta installed, and sometimes flakey updates.

[Shayde48]

Two years later and now I'm having the same problem. Custom shapes disappear too for me!

[JLMArts]

Yep, same here! I have all my brush sets exactly where they are supposed to be on my hard drive. They were there every time I turned on my computer. Just this week they've all disappeared and I have to keep reloading them. Not good. Wish there was a solution for this.

[Shayde48]

AArrggh and again!! Just spent two days organising my brushes just the way I like then PS lost ALL of them! New brushes, folders etc.  If I liked your basic brushes so much I wouldn't have bothered in the first place!

[The5amKebab]

I don't even have the option drop down menu for brushes, even though the folder is there and is not hidden, I cnahged it to viewable, how does PS break so bad all the time!?

[dcypher]

Having the same problem in the newest version of PS 21.0.3; every time I get my brushes loaded and customized, they get wiped out back to the default list when an update to PS occurs. (subscription based).....can anyone let me know how to save the brushes? I'm not seeing the "brushes" option in the dropdown list.

[dcypher]

Update: After a bit of research I'm thinking that brushes aren't managed in the Preset Manager. I just backed up my brushes and I guess I'll drag-and-drop into the brushes panel when a PS update ocurrs and wipes everything back to defaults.

[MDamiani57]

It's hopeless I've tried customer service they remotely took control of my computer said they had to tell my computer that it was ok to save the brushes which that failed to very frustrated I've had to reload all my brushes and styles 3 times this week two updates and a crash called them 3 times without a fix I'm at a loss as to how they can't figure this out. started when I switched to the cloud service thinking about going back to the disc version.

[nancycoste]

same exact problem preset managner does not have the brushes!!!!! cant find all the brushes created, find myself having to reload all the downloaded purchased brushes but cant find the ones I created...does anyone know where they might have been stored that is the brushes that I manually made? 

[judyl26889252]

This video has solved the problem for me......     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCdMLIW-ySc&t=3s

[ellieb2391800]

In the 2021 version the gear is now missing from the brush window.  Is there another way to do this?  I lost everything!

[Quartz]

Same! This is the 3rd time in a week they disappered.  I wont close photoshop and they still vanish as I am working.

[prismofowl]

I am having the exact same issue. I was working on a number of projects last year and earlier this year with no trouble at all. I downloaded a number of Kyle's brushes, created my own brush folders so that I could return to brushes that I particularly liked easily and was able to shut down PS and come back the following day with everything there. But this week everything keeps diappearing apart from a few standard Adobe brushes and 4 random groups of Kyle's brushes. 

I have saved all of the .abr files in the PS Presets folder in my hd and made sure that the total size of brush presets I was loading into PS was not over 1.7GB as I read in another thread that it could be an issue. Hasn't made a jot of difference. I just don't understand what we're supposed to do!

[nancycoste]

I have the exat same problem!!!!!!!!