Patterns visualisation - possibly outside photoshop

[Imaginerie]

Hello all!

sorry I couldn't be specific in the title, but I would like to know if there is a way I can visualise all my patterns without loading them in photoshop. Being a photoshop user since times immemorial (well, not that long!), I have acquired, and more importantly created litterally thousands of patterns. Over the years I have saved them more or less adequately in their own sets, named them rather flippantly (as you do) and possibly have tens of duplicates (did I say that I had thousands?). 

Now I am feeling like I need to sort this out - saving space on my hard drive becoming a priority. I would like to know if there is a way I could check what's in those sets of patterns without loading them in photoshop, deleting those duplicates, re-saving them and so on... I have started and proves a very tedious task.

I am thinking that since those patterns are likely .jpgs or .png anyway, I might check what's inside those sets with say, bridge?

Maybe it's a stupid question, I just find the preset manager not very intuitive when you got a large amount of preset to "manage"... Or simply I missed a better way to do it inside Photoshop maybe?

Thanks for your input!

[Semaphoric]

I would like the same thing. There is a way, but it requires coding. The currently loaded Patterns are found in the Photoshop Settings folder, as Patterns.psp. Other Patterns are stored as PatternSetName.pat.

You can find the format for these files here, and it would be possible to construct a browser for them (I reckon). You can view the data for them in a hex editor, or even a text editor like Word Pad, but that doesn't show you the Patterns themselves.

[Imaginerie]

Thanks, That's what I thought. I would be interested in the coding part (I could then bribe my husband into it 🙂 )

[mark-heaps]

I would agree it would be great to treat this in a way that is like a web graphic that is linked to, and then appearance properties are stacked over it when the pattern is used. That way you don't have duplicates. If you have thousands of swatches, how big is each swatch on average? I ask because I think that information would be helpful to someone from Adobe that reads this. If it is taking up such a big part of your hard drive, this could help inform a resolve.

[Imaginerie]

Thanks Mark,
Yes my files are big (my patterns folder is currently 1.3 GB, not counting older back-ups of those patterns I only load when needed). I work in the fabric industry, and create patterns from product photography of fabric that are then transfered into other type of fabric (think curtains etc...) so yes the original photography is huge, and generally only contains one "repeat", that I need to transform into a repeatable pattern. If that makes sense.
One major issue is the time it takes to load on start up, when I know I have duplicates and sets that could do with a bit of re-organising. The task is simply too big at the moment on top of my normal work.

I'll report on any findings - re: coding or otherwise, and yes, it would be ace if Adobe could improve things (it goes for the whole suite as well, I could do with some brushes organising as well. ( Illustrator would benefit too!)

Adobe, pretty please! 🙂

[mark-heaps]

So there is a hack from the CS5 days where you could go into a directory and do a rename to find images that were duplicates through the metadata and changing resolution. Check out this tutorial someone wrote back then. Maybe it puts you on the right path.

https://itstillworks.com/12535416/how-to-remove-duplicates-in-adobe-bridge

[Imaginerie]

Thanks, however, patterns come in .pat (which in fact are folders (see screenshot). I am merely trying to find a way to visualise what's inside that folder. Like if you wanted to see what's inside a zipped folder without unzipping it.

My aim would be to check for duplicates inside the folders (sets) and reorganise the content, not the folders/sets themselves.

[mark-heaps]

Ahhh I better understand the request now.

Go to this page and submit it as a feature request. That will be seen by the product managers and engineering team if there is enough response to it. 

https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family