Photoshop wiped all my user settings, Actions, Workspace, Brushes, Shortcuts, when upgrading to 2025

[rosie cakes]

Photoshop wiped all my user settings, Actions, Workspace, Brushes, Shortcuts, when upgrading to 2025. This never happened with any previous update. I'm presuming I ave now lost everything as I cannot find any backups and all info from Photoshop 24 seems to have been automatically wiped? 

[AxelMatt]

@rosie cakes This shouldn't happen, but it sometimes happens.

So it's recommended to backup all your settings regularly.

Re: How to backup all brushes, preferences, settin... - Adobe Product Community - 14526606

See also here: Migrate presets, actions, and settings

[Anshul_Saini]

Hi @rosie cakes,

I agree with what Axel mentioned. This isn’t expected behavior, though it can occasionally occur, which is why it’s always a good idea to back up settings as an extra precaution before updating.

Just to check, is the option “Import previous settings and preferences” enabled in your Creative Cloud Desktop app> Preferences > Apps? If it wasn’t selected during the update, that could explain why your presets and workspaces didn’t carry over.

Let us know what you find. It might help us understand whether the migration step was skipped.

Best,

Anshul Saini

[rosie cakes]

Thanks for your replies, yes this was enabled in the preferences. I also had delete old versions deselected, but it still deleted everything.

Incredibly frustrating, I did not realise that the brushes and actions I created were temporary files, I have been using them for years. It will be impossible to recreate them all exactly. This is the service we pay huge sums of money for, this is going to cost me a lot of money in hours spent trying to get back to where I was yesterday.

[Trevor.Dennis]

I also had delete old versions deselected, but it still deleted everything.

By @rosie cakes

Have you checked the Previous Version Presets folder? Photoshop usually leaves the presets for one version back.

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

[rosie cakes]

For some reason there was no 2024 folder. I have one from 2022 which I have managed to get some brushes back from. 

[Trevor.Dennis · Accepted solution]

I hope you didn't lose too much.  You were lucky that the 2022 presets still had any content.

Going forward you might like to take a different approach.  I mainly use Windows 11, but do also have a MackBook Pro. 

I put all my brushes, Actions, Patterns, downloaded fonts, skies etc. in My Documents folders, and place shortcuts to those folders in the appropriate preset folders.  This lets me share the same assets with current release and beta, plus 22.2, and it keeps them safe for those times that major version updates send those assets into the pit of oblivion.   You need to remember to move any presets you export out to .abr files (brushes) etc. to those folders, because they will still be saved to the default locations.

I don't know how to make shortcuts on the Mac, but I am sure it is just easy as on Windows.

I just read your first post again and see you also lost custom shortcuts. The way I keep them safe is to save them with custom workspaces, and I do the same thing with workspaces as I do with brushes etc. 

This is a favourite trick of mine, because it means you can reuse the same shortcuts according to context.

For instance I use these Window > Arrange shortcuts from a Michael Ninness workshop at MAX about 12 years ago.  Shift Ctrl Alt T is the shortcut for Free Transform Step & Repeat, so I switch to the Essentials workspace when I need the default. 

[rosie cakes]

Thanks Trevor, I'll be doing this going forward.