Photoshop brushes disappeared

[rubyxcube]

I had a few hundred brushes on my Photoshop. But today when I opened photoshop, all the brushes were gone, except for the default ones and the ones from the last set that I imported in. When I last imported that set of brushes, I clearly remember the rest of the brushes still being there as I was using some new and old ones together, so I don't think I clicked "reset brushes". Also, I can't change the hardness of the brushes, except for the default ones. I already started re-importing some of the lost brushes, but it'll take too long to do all of them so I would really appreciate it if you could help me with this problem

[kendallplant]

Hi there

When you say "gone", do you mean gone from the Brushes panel, or gone from your Presets folder altogether? When you download and install custom brushes, make sure that make their way into the Photoshop Brushes preset folder, shown below.

If the brushes you have installed are showing up in the Brush settings flyout menu (shown below) but not in the Brushes panel, you probably accidentally replaced your brushes instead of appending, or your preferences were reset.

If you want to get all of your brushes back into your Brushes panel quickly, try using the Preset manager within Photoshop. Using this, you can select multiple brush files and load them in at once. Just go to Edit > Presets > Preset Manager, and hit the "Load" button.

For some tips and alternative methods of managing your Photoshop Presets, check out this great article: Installing And Managing Brushes And Other Presets

Regarding the hardness: typically, only the standard round brushes allow you to adjust the hardness. Even the other brushes that come preinstalled in Photoshop don't allow you to adjust hardness 🙂

[juruko]

That doesn’t solve the issue!!!!!!!!!!!!

No answer I have come across on the net works. When I restart Photoshop all the brushes and presets are gone. Frankly, I’m sick of loading brushes every day. It also doesn’t keep newly created brushes. Guess it’s time to switch to Affinity!

[kit Kerner]

Juruko, I'm not giving up on Photoshop (PS) just yet. As I have mentioned, somewhere in here, I have the same problem and all I read is 'Presets'. Nope, that isn't the answer. I have to use the Presets Manager to load my brushes back or use an Action (that I created) to do it that way. It just depends on my mood. I never had this problem before and sometimes, my other settings are set back to the defaults. Photoshop is a 'deep and complex' application and sometimes I feel like I am in the deep end of a pool that is dark. I will never use PS to its fullest potential but it does more than any other application I have come across and to relearn something new that may have its own issues. . . don't do it. I do not work for Adobe and I am not happy with Adobe. As far as I am concerned they broke the application.

Almost every time when I open up PS it acts different. Since I have the original brushes I have and copied the groups to several local places as well as the cloud, I just have to deal with the dang presets or run an Action (that loads all the usual brushes I created). It gets frustrating when I loose my screen settings or the Saved Documents (pictures), it is a pain. So, I created an action or two.

Now, I will be looking for a local tutor when I can take my laptop and show them what I see. I need a sanity check because I keep getting told that it is the Presets. As someone else wrote "That doesn’t solve the issue!!!!!!!!!!!!". It doesn't

Lastly, to anyone that has an issue, ever so often a little survey pops up when PS closes, FILL IT OUT. They get read, Maybe not right away, but they get read and all I will say is Adobe Technical Staff contacted me for a conversation; before my upgrade and troubles.

Good Luck!

[pamela027]

In all the years I have used Adobe Photoshop I have Never had a pop up asking me what for a feed back survey! 

Guess some of us aren't as appreciated as others.. lol

[pamela027]

I am with you on the Photoshop platform, you cannot count on it to keep any brushes, actions, patterns or anything added to make it easier to work, very frustrating.

[Hemu1234]

I agree with you, Photohop has gone million miles backwards, all the new "features" are really frustrating. The program you have trusted for 15 years, is now total marketing platform, with all the annoiying polls and marketing stuff. And it does not work reliably!

[chad.rolfs]

@Gorgi could you post a video somewhere showing this?  I'd love to help but I can't reproduce the problem.  Seeing what you're running into would really help.  (youtube, dropbox, etc).  Thanks!

[gregb88568710]

How can he reproduce it, it just happens, when you start photoshop, every great once and a while and you need a brush and all the brushes that you imported are no longer in your brush pallet just the default one. in my case window 10 machine and photoshop 2021 so frustrating! all the work of importing the brushes over time suddenly gone.

[el ojo del5E10]

exacto ami pasa lo mismo, todos los dias tengo que caragr los pinceles y tengo el photoshop 2019, anteriormete me habia pasado lo mismo pero solo tenia que reistalarlo y ya esta, pero ahora se me desaparecen todos los dias, si sabes o encuentras la causa..te agradeceria is compratirias esa informacion.. 

[emcle1]

i not only have the same issue, but EVERY time i close photoshop, ALL my brushes i imported disappear, and i am left spending 2 hours every time i want to use it re-importing the same brushes over and over again. there has to be a way to get this to stop happening.

[scottie1600]

I have the same dam problem and getting very frustrated with it. I ask and they say they have no problems. We pay good money for this program. Please fix it Adobe. Thank you

[ElPainto]

Similar Issue, I made some brushes a couple weeks ago and now I can't find them. I get the impression it just reloaded the original .abr file which didn't include the new items. It seems to work fine now... but I don't think what I created before was saved anywhere.

[emcle1]

i found the only safe way to avoid this, because i lost dozens i had worked on before i knew this would happen after upgrading, was to immediately create a file folder in the brushes tab menu, and then drag the brush right into it after you are done creating it. then before you close out ps for the day, export it to your file location of choice. i save all mine to my creative cloud file so i can access them from all my computers. cloud is best.

[kit Kerner]

Well, I thought I was the only one that had 'missing' brushes. It happen to me too almost every time I close out Photoshop. Since I create most of my brushes I have a sub-directory where I have on hand the ones I created, but what a hassle. I have posted my observation in another forum and have not received a reason why. There are other concerns, but I'll wait a little longer. . . I think someone, somewhere broke Photoshop. Good Luck!

[pamela027]

Yes, still lose brushes and now it is worse because it also deletes actions, patterns and styles.  So it is a real pain to update this app!

[pamela027]

same problem, sure with the photoshop people would fix this!!

[kit Kerner]

Maybe I am special, but my friends don't think so. What is interesting is my current issue with these presets is it wasn't there before. This is new, after the latest upgrade. The upgrade seemed to have cleared up my other issues. I was cruising along just fine until I started to pay attention to what the (bad words here) I was doing!

Good Luck!

[The5amKebab]

Adobe, fix your stuff, this is ridiculous! I need editing programs for my income, I'm one feature away from dropping AE for Davinci resolve completely and I'm one more fudge up from dropping PS for GIMP, that's how bad your software has become for someone that needs reliability. I'm paying a fudgeload for all your apps, even crap I don't need, so make sure we're getting what we're paying for otherwise its just daylight robbery and I'm cancelling all future payments.

[dcypher]

...and why does my brush panel revert back to the standard default brushes with every Adobe PS update! This is getting old old!...after customizing my brushes and adding new ones, they end up getting wiped out! How to fix this?

[greyhawke674]

I've found it to be a either a brush compatability issue, or a library size issue.

With all my brushes installed I tried to instal a new group of preset brushes. It deleted all of them.

I then installed just the new brushes, they were fine after close and relaunching.

Then I reinstalled all my previous brushes on top of those. They wiped on shutdown.

SO I picked a subset of brushes that I needed for a particular job, exported a new preset with just those brushes. 

I imported the new brushes, and the newly exported preset with just a subset of brushes, it was fine. 

It did however leave me with only half of my usual brush library.

You may try to pick and choose the brushes you want in your library. I know personally it's a huge pain in the ass, but it worked for me. I now have a certain brush set I use for each type of job I am doing and I reexport and test brushes more frequently to see if they delete my entire library.

The simple solution would be for adobe to get thier shiz together.

[nancycoste]

I just had the exact same problem!!!! terrible to loose all the new brushes I created... even going back into time machine I do not see the brushes in the preset- brushes , going back yesterday when I had all the brushes...this is nuts!!!!

do you mean gone from the Brushes panel, or gone from your Presets folder altogether?

Yes gone from brush panel and presets folder and an other question where do we find our self made brushes so from now on I will back them up , how to do that I am not sure, in fact we need insturction how to save the whole panel with the organsised brushes imported, the orginals and the new ones we created so its easy to recouperate the whole brush panel with all the brushes!!!!!!

[denisee85840316]

Today for the second time my brushes have vanished!  It's absolutely not related anything I'm doing, excepting exiting Photoshop when I'm done for the day.   I turn off PS when I'm done working and the next day the brushes have vanished except for the basic set and the last few brushes I was using.  I'm using PS 2020 and it's kept up to date.  The first time this happened was last fall, about six months ago.  Prior to this I hadn't heard about the mysterious missing brush syndrome.  I had no brushes backed up in a different folder at that time, thinking (foolish me) that they were snug and secure within the Adobe folder.  Hah.  Well, after that learning experience I did create a backup folder for the brushes so I could quickly reimport them if it happened again.  It didn't happen again until today.  Yesterday's work session was nothing out of the ordinary, in fact quite ordinary.  This clearly is a bug and looking at the date of the first message, it's going on for seven years.   I would much rather see Adobe get this fixed rather than introducing fancy new features I'd only use once in a while, whereas brushes are practically the life blood of the program.  It's a real pain to have to import the brushes because I have to sort them into the particular categories I use all over again.  If anyone knows of a more expeditious way to do this I'd like to hear about it. 

[Glenn 8675309]

Note the location:  just put your abr file in the proper presets lcoation (for either PS or PSE) and you should have no issues. 

[Tradeview · Accepted solution]

It's now 2020 and the problem is still here. What is going on? I can't recover any of my hundreds of brushes, only the default brushes are there!