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Question

Resetting Preferences....what the actual...????

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
April 13, 2021
5 replies
1084 views

A common solution given to someone experiencing technical problems in Photoshop is "reset the preferences". Which, while it may fix whatever the issue-of-the-day was, you spend the next couple of days wondering why other things aren't working right because, oh yeah, I reset my preferences.

This got me thinking that if the preferences file(s) are that volatile and Adobe knows this surely there must be a way to back up the preferences so they can be restored rather than recreated. So I searched Adobe and only found steps to manually copy the preferences folder. Manually. Copy. The. Folder. (https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/preferences.html#BackupPhotoshoppreferences)

Seriously... it's 2021. Obviously, there's a fatal flaw in preference management, the "reset the preferences" suggestion is now akin to "make sure it's plugged in" and there's no export or save the preferences ability??? Do you guys at Adobe actually use this software?

If Mr. Narayen had to put up with this I bet this would be fixed.

Problem or error

This topic has been closed for replies.

Conrad_C

Community Expert

When the preferences are in a state that I want to preserve, there is already an easy way of backing them up. For any application.

Right-click the Preferences file or folder for that application, and compress it. It becomes a ZIP file that the application won’t read. Now I can delete or freely alter the working preferences file/folder.

In the future, if I want to restore the previous preferences, I delete the existing preferences and double-click the ZIPped preferences still sitting in the same folder, to bring back the preserved copy. Naturally, my automatic system backup routine is already always saving incremental backups of the preferences, so that’s two ways to get back to the known good preferences.

Because there are at least two ways to get back to the old preferences, I don’t think it’s necessary for each individual application to come up with its own preferences backup code. Resetting preferences is a standard troubleshooting step for many applications, but who's demanding that all those individual applications have their own preferences backup feature? Just make sure you have a good overall backup solution is in place, and there should always be a way to get back to the old preferences. Because no one should be doing serious work without a robust, ongoing backup system.

Warren Heaton

Community Expert

It may be worth mentioning that restoring the preferences file to the default is just one of many troubleshooting options to fix issues in Photoshop:
Basic troubleshooting steps to fix most issues
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/basic-troubleshooting.html

-Warren

PECourtejoie

Community Expert

Hi, I think that some record an action that sets their preferences the way they want.

I monitor a few machines, and do not remember having to reset them to cure issues.

The only case is when IT reinstalls our machine, they usually wipe all the folders, so I sometimes keep a spare pref file, but it is not so long to recreate.

The most annoying thing is having to recreate the crop presets, as they are two types of crop presets, only one you can't save is available on a right-click.

D Fosse

Community Expert

Preferences are prone to corruption because they are rewritten every time you exit the application. In contrast to program files that are read-only.

So errors accumulate, and any improper shutdown can cause corrupt prefs.

Most of us have to do this at most once a year. If it's much more than that, there's some underlying system problem, most likely with your machine user account.

Billy BurkeAuthor

Participating Frequently

I'm sorry but once a year is one time too many! In what other software do you have to annually reset your preferences?

That it happens at all with the regularity it does across the user base is unacceptable. There are literally billions of files being written every day without issue. This is not an individual, one-off, it's your machine, it's your account, it's the color of your electricity problem. This is a known widespread and persistent problem. There is this concept in programming called "integrity checking" that seems to be missing here.

Derek Cross

Community Expert

I find I have to reset my Photoshop preferences a couple of times a year, it's an easy process that doesn't take long and kind of cleans the system.

davescm

Community Expert

"Do you guys at Adobe actually use this software?"

This forum is answered by volunteer Photoshop users, we do not work for Adobe. You can raise feature requests at the link below , where they will be seen by Adobe staff.
https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family

Dave

Billy BurkeAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thank you, Dave. I definitely will contact them through this forum. I had read somewhere on this forum that this forum was the only way to get any kind of message to Adobe. Thank you for clarifying.

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