Inspiring

Answered

WHY was Sync Settings Removed in CC 2015.1

Forum|Forum|10 years ago
December 3, 2015
17 replies
12065 views

Sync Settings has been removed in Photoshop CC 2015.1. The existing service in Photoshop CC and CC 2014 will become unavailable in the near future. To migrate your presets/settings from an earlier version of Photoshop CC to this release, see Migrate settings. (New features summary: Photoshop CC 2015 release)

Why in the world would you remove this feature from Photoshop and other apps? Part of the point of having things in the cloud is that one could quickly and easily sync their workspace across multiple workstations e.g., home and office computers. Am I now supposed to do this manually? Why remove a feature that so many used to make their workflow more efficient, faster, and easier? Do you have something in the works to replace it or are we just supposed to take a big step backwards. I would like a real answer... NOT links to how to migrate on one computer nor would I like links to your articles and help pages that contain typos and other errors.

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer ProDesignTools

arifkuyucu wrote:

question time: Dec 3, 2015 9:38 AM

today time: March 9, 2016 16:26 AM

No response, no explanation is more than 90 days!

An Adobe Photoshop UI Engineer responded on the thread that Gene posted above... Here is his reply:

4 months ago

David Tristram, Employee

Hi Everyone,

I'm very sorry to hear how frustrated and unhappy you are over the removal of Sync Settings. I agree it's a great feature that is very useful for some of you. I also regret that no one from Adobe has followed up on this thread. I am not directly involved in this feature, but I was able to learn a few things that influenced the change:

– usability: the feature was complex and difficult for many users
– roadmap changes: Adobe wants more of a focus on CC Libraries
– technical issues: the servers used for the feature are going away

The rest of the CC apps have a means of sharing settings across installations. Photoshop needs to have that too. Here is the last line of the Product Manager's post to the pre-release forum:

"Though Sync Settings will be removed from the next version of Photoshop, we plan to continue investigating a solution. It’s too early to tell when such a solution will ship, but we would love to hear your feedback about this area and what you would want in a future version."

I am trying to get his okay to post the full message, but above are the main points. I know it seems like Adobe is this huge company that certainly can implement a simple feature like sharing app preferences, but actually the software is very complex and there are many issues competing for the development team's attention.
For Ps CC 2015.1 it was simply not practical to provide Sync Settings while keeping the rest of the application strong.

Thank you so for your involvement and passion for Photoshop. It means a lot to me.

David

David Tristram
Photoshop UI Engineer

For further discussion or to give feedback to Adobe, you may wish to post to, follow, or "me too" that thread:

Photoshop CC 2015.1: Why was sync settings removed?

Eman717

Participant

Just want to say, it's Q4, 2019, and this useful feature that was removed was never reimplemented, and I could care less about CC libraries. The only thing I actually want synced is my workspaces, think you could spend some of that monopoly money you're hoarding on a couple of your engis to figure this out? It's literally been 1414 days since this thead was started, what was your excuse adobe execs?

K

KidAtArt_

Participant

It's ridiculous that in 2020, there's still no Sync Settings feature for Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign! Come on Adobe!

Dave_Mole

Inspiring

Sad thing here is that Adobe couldn't care less what users want, they have a total monopoly, there is no competition, so they can please themselves.

Jonny Shaw

Known Participant

Damn! I actually never used this feature properly but had planned to. (Can't believe I've only actually now noticed its gone!) Problem for me was I never spent the time really setting things up exactly how I liked, so when it did sync it usually pulled down a mess of an interface (but familiar) after a reformat.

CC Libraries are more of a hindrance imo and should have been the feature that was dropped. Content is easier to manage backup and sync yourself than settings of the program itself. Just another way for Adobe to push their storage plans I guess

Since Adobe finally allowed brushes to be managed properly (but still nothing for the rest of the options - such as custom shapes) I've been looking to set things up a little better now from scratch. (Had a reformat yesterday for the fall creators update + CC 2018).

One workaround I'm looking into now is using Goodsync to sync the PS settings into my Creative Cloud folder. Will see how that pans out.

Jonny Shaw

Known Participant

So I've managed to set this up pretty well with GoodSync (only workspaces at the moment). Have set to sync rather than backup to my Creative Cloud folder, that way can make adjustments on more than one pc and simply sync back to Photoshop. It has an automode that will run when the file changes and also a ton of settings for syncing at shutdown, periodically etc.

entplex

Participant

This is breaking core functionality, at the bare minimum please provide a tool to export ALL CC settings across all apps, hell even a way to export all settings in a single app i.e. Photoshop would be great. Having to separately export actions, presets, settings, etc isn't a solution and makes system administration a nightmare.

Like many other professional class programs, there should be a interface that let's you select which settings you want to export and then the same when importing on a different computer. Keep it to a single interface though for ideally all CC apps, but still give users the ability to check or un check which things get rolled into the 'settings export' and then which get imported. Simply unacceptable and very antithetical to the supposed features of a cloud based app - if the cloud part doesn't work, make it so you can roll it to a file on your computer send to another computer.

Take a look at how SolidWorks handles settings export and import - a decent reference point. Also allows users to take a snapshot ot their settings and then play around and restore if you don't like something you've changed.

Barb Binder

Community Expert

This is the community forum, mostly manned by volunteers who don't work for Adobe.

Here is a link to add feature requests that you want to make sure Adobe sees:

Wishform - Adobe InDesign

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

D

Dani Mercado

Participant

Hi, sync settings between computers was very useful. Especially when is time to move work to home. Please consider you bring back this tool. Thanks.

W

wise_light6857

Participant

Totally agree, I'm out of words that this feature is gone. I thought this is the future of working in a cloud. Having your workspace set-up and files ready to start without setting everything up every time. So not wasting time on set-ups instead start working. Really disappointed that this feature is gone.

Happend to a lot of features... like Mini Bridge

J

Jason I. Morgan

Participant

Adobe, working in Illustrator then all of a sudden I noticed none of my tools were where they should be! So, now I have to go back to saving a copy of my Pref files in Dropbox again. The USER shouldn't have to use another Cloud service to do your work at this point, you Adobe had it figured out, its 2017 and you pull it back to the stone age! Thanks Adobe for making the User workflow stop flowing.

Barb Binder

Community Expert

I noticed none of my tools were where they should be

Tool visibility and location is controlled by your workspace. Have you set up (and saved) a custom workspace? This way you can always reset your workspace to put things back where you want them.

Set up your workspace just the way you like it.
Window > Workspace > New Workspace

When tools go missing:

Window > Workspace > Reset [your workspace name here]

Adobe Photoshop workspace basics

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

J

Jason I. Morgan

Participant

I have a custom Workspace setup, it did not sync to my other computer when I opened the app, which is the point of this thread.

It had been a while since I had to work from home, so I had changed some things in my workflow by this time.

I do not use the default Adobe Workspaces.

Location of custom Workspace (Windows 7 on both computers):

C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator 21 Settings\en_US\x64\Workspaces

"Your Workspace File"

KenRepasi

Participant

I just bought a new computer. I had no idea that this feature was disappearing so I did not back up my settings. It is more then just frustrating to find this out now. I have to spend time recreating actions. This is time consuming and was not necessary before because I could just sync everything

personally I have no idea how to use libraries and do not know that it would solve my actions problems if I did.

L

Light_In

Known Participant

Adobe has it in their culture to do really dumb stuff and the community always has to find a work around.

it is hard to believe that they survive making decisions like this, but alas, we need their photo processing power. I guess.

Ken,

I just moved from PC to Mac... here is what helped me.
How to Migrate Lightroom to a New Computer - YouTube

Merging Individual Lightroom Catalogs into a “Master” Catalog - YouTube

I used an external drive to move everything. I set it up to copy the files overnight while I slept and then moved it to my mac in the morning and let it copy while I was at work.

Then used the Catalog merge to bring everything together.

Note: I had sidecar files turned off and in hindsight, I would clear the previews and let them rebuild. Less stuff to move that way.

Hope this helps.

K

Kynning

Participant

Ai and Ps – found out, but what about InDesign? how to export Id presets?

T

thatnickguy

Participant

For many of us, a significant feature of the Creative Cloud sales pitch was the ability to seamlessly sync settings between machines. This isn't just a bait & switch, it's a bait and pull.

As for the reasons provided for the change, they don't hold water on their own:

– usability: the feature was complex and difficult for many users However, it was also simple and easy for many users

– roadmap changes: Adobe wants more of a focus on CC Libraries Are sync settings & CC libraries mutually exclusive? CC libraries doesn't offer a replacement solution for sync settings. Sync settings was capable of a great many things we can no longer do via CC libraries. They shared some similarities, but they were hardly redundant items. Did Adobe kill the clone stamp feature to put more of a focus on healing & patching?

– technical issues: the servers used for the feature are going away "Going away" and "gone" are two different things. Why not keep the feature around if it's still possible? Unless, the decision to remove sync settings was made in order to cut the cost of having those servers.

arifkuyucu

Participant

question time: Dec 3, 2015 9:38 AM

today time: March 9, 2016 16:26 AM

No response, no explanation is more than 90 days!

ProDesignTools

Correct answer

Community Expert

arifkuyucu wrote:

question time: Dec 3, 2015 9:38 AM

today time: March 9, 2016 16:26 AM

No response, no explanation is more than 90 days!

An Adobe Photoshop UI Engineer responded on the thread that Gene posted above... Here is his reply:

4 months ago

David Tristram, Employee

Hi Everyone,

I'm very sorry to hear how frustrated and unhappy you are over the removal of Sync Settings. I agree it's a great feature that is very useful for some of you. I also regret that no one from Adobe has followed up on this thread. I am not directly involved in this feature, but I was able to learn a few things that influenced the change:

– usability: the feature was complex and difficult for many users
– roadmap changes: Adobe wants more of a focus on CC Libraries
– technical issues: the servers used for the feature are going away

The rest of the CC apps have a means of sharing settings across installations. Photoshop needs to have that too. Here is the last line of the Product Manager's post to the pre-release forum:

"Though Sync Settings will be removed from the next version of Photoshop, we plan to continue investigating a solution. It’s too early to tell when such a solution will ship, but we would love to hear your feedback about this area and what you would want in a future version."

I am trying to get his okay to post the full message, but above are the main points. I know it seems like Adobe is this huge company that certainly can implement a simple feature like sharing app preferences, but actually the software is very complex and there are many issues competing for the development team's attention.
For Ps CC 2015.1 it was simply not practical to provide Sync Settings while keeping the rest of the application strong.

Thank you so for your involvement and passion for Photoshop. It means a lot to me.

David

David Tristram
Photoshop UI Engineer

For further discussion or to give feedback to Adobe, you may wish to post to, follow, or "me too" that thread:

Photoshop CC 2015.1: Why was sync settings removed?

Optimistic_force0D44

Known Participant

So what is the procedure now to sync settings in Photoshop CC 2015.5 ? I wan to migrate all my settings, actions, presets, keys, brushes... to new computer but now i can't ?

Please Adobe what is the procedure now?

Thanks

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