Basic Photoshop question - User Presets

The list of loaded presets are saved to a preferences file each time you close normally (don't crash), yes, and temporarily any presets you've created. But if you have any presets that you've created without saving them separately, they will be lost for good should Preferences become corrupted and/or deleted, or even if you crash during the session you're creating presets. I had that happen once when I was creating several presets at once. Learned my lesson that day. <BG>

You can create an action of changes you make in the Preferences dialog by first setting your preferences to the default, then start the action and record every change to preferences that you make. This is good so long as Preferences don't change version to version. Unfortunately, they change frequently, so to rely upon the action rather than check manually to see that there are no new preferences is iffy, and it seems lately that changes to Preferences by a new version can affect the stability of your Preferences file more than it used to—maybe because the default Preferences are changing, being added to, subtracted from, whatever.

The action recording the Preferences in the dialog won't help with presets, though—your brushes, styles, swatches, etc. So while they will continue to be loaded so long as the file that gets written to Settings on a normal quit doesn't become corrupt or deleted, what you want loaded is somewhat fragile.

So another thing people often do when their system is completely stable is locate the Photoshop Settings file and copy it someplace safe. That will include the "good" list of presets you've loaded, your regular Prefs in the dialog, your workspaces, etc. On Mac, they're in the user Library> Preferences> Adobe Photoshop cc (year) Settings folder. I always forget how Windows handles that, I'm afraid, but this link should help.

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/preferences.html

Of course, if your Settings file becomes 2 years old because you forget about it and don't overwrite it fairly often, you're probably starting over from that 64,000 foot view<G> I often try to tell myself when these things go kerplooie that I needed to clean it all up anyway. Makes me feel a little bit better. LOL

Hey, thanks! What I like about PS is there are several ways to 'skin the cat' and I like cats. This may sound funny, even after a crash or a normal closing of the application the user defined presets (mine) were there. I didn't have to load a brush that I created, it was just there. 

My original problem of [copy] [paste] not working after upgrading to the latest version of PS got me to this forum and even then the presets remained in place; at least ways I am pretty sure they were there. It was only after Adobe Tech support accessed my computer I noticed it. The [copy] [paste] issue, along with the others, seem to have been resolved. 

As crazy as this may read, I had not used the presets manager and the Action I created was just something I tried out but I like using the presets manager better. 


I will never admit to knowing PS like the back of my hand and every time I come here I read stuff there is over my head or I am not involved with. I'll continue to ride the bike, with brakes or without brakes, falling down or not. I'm in much better shape with my original issues resolved, or seem to have been resolved because I was just dead in the water. 


Thanks again for your input and of course Good Luck! 
 

> I'll continue to ride the bike, with brakes or without brakes, falling down or not.

Isn't that the way we all do just about anything? <BG> Nice way to put  it. And you're very welcome.