Photoshop Brushes Folder
Clinio Lofton
I am totally confounded by brush management. Using Photoshop 24.4.1 and Windows 10 Pro 64 bit. On my C drive, program files, Adobe I find folders for Adobe Photoshop 2021, Adobe Photoshop 2022, and Photoshop 2023. In the 2021 folder>presets>brushes there are 130 abr files but not all of them show up in the brushes panel in PS! Some do, some don't. In the folder Adobe Photoshop 2022 there is no preset, hence no brush folder. In the Photoshop 2023 folder under presets>brushes there are only 2 abr files, only one of which shows up in the brush panel in PS. I'd like to simply install all the 130 brushes but my experience is that this can lead to multiple copies of the same brush in PS. It is not smart enough to say "whoa, you already have that brush" or if it is, I'm not smart enough to find a help page to tell me how. I can find no way to do a count on how many brushes are actually loaded in the brush panel so there may be more or less than that 130. I can also find no way to search for duplicate brushes, nor easily delete more than one at a time.
The fundamental question then is, where should all the abr files be stored? Then, is there any EASY way to compare brushed already installed in PS to the list of abr files in whatever folder they should be in?
Hi @Nature Light, thanks for your question on brush management. I agree it can be confusing, and there are lots of experts who know way more than I do! I went about it (most likely) the long way. First, I did a global search for all my .abr files (*.abr). I copied all of these files to a brand-new folder in a different directory.
Many thanks. I did the global search for abr also but stopped short of your next steps. I thought that would indeed be the way to go but wanted to see if I got any other insights here first. I'm going to mark your answer as correct though because it is a way to solve it.
Great, and I also hope others can chime in with more insights. I did this when I got a new computer last year and needed to transfer all my brushes. Having my own dedicated system folder outside of Adobe programs to store all my brush files (and actions and swatches and patterns, etc.) is how I keep up with it from version-to-version and project to project.
Hi Nature Light,
The answer below although well intended is more confusing than the question. Gloabal search What?? Why have the file disappeared in the first place. As if the directory folder for Presets is not remote enough in some far of reaches of File Explorer, when you find it, it is empty. Why does anyone have to do a global search and create new folders, or is this simply some sort of scam to frustrate users. well its quite brilliant really. must be thousands of users going thru the same wild goose chase.
Its becoming too frightening to do any updates. maybe Adobe hates its users?
When you created your custom brushes or brush tool presets did you save them anywhere? If you do not they would only be in you users ID Photoshop preferences only. If your Preferences get reset you could well have lost all your Brushes and Tool Presets. As well as anything else you have added to Photoshop. Like Actions, custom shapes etc. Whenever you add something to Photoshop you should also save what you add. So if you the reset or Photoshop reset your preferences you can load what you saved back into Photoshop. When you Define a custom Brush or shape or add something you should the use the Preset Manager to save what you added to Photoshop.
You can save them and load them anywhere you want I save the into my own Photoshop tree and use the for every version of Photoshop I have installed. On Windows I use Library Docuements My Photoshop Brushes The folder is actually on an external USB3 disk
Owen, the App Data Presets location is the way to go. It makes it easy to find your brushes after an update. If you find yourself with lots of brushsets, then my trick is to rename the sets with meaningful names so that they group together, but leave enough of the original name to know where the set came from. I try to limit myself to 100 sets, and if I find that a challenge, I cherry pick individual brushes into new sets.
Are you taking your Photoshop version into account? If Windows, you also need to make Files & Folders viewable in File Explorer. You'll obviously need to change the user name, and Photoshop version if you re not using CC2018.
Sorry, Trevor.Dennis, I should have mentioned that I am on Mac OS X and am using the most updated version of Photoshop 2018. I sometimes lose track of where I place a brush and there is no way to search for the location of the brush. So, I would like a way of searching for a brush; anyway.
Where you find the saved brush depends on your version of Photoshop. In previous versions the brush is saved to the bottom of the Brush Presets panel. In the 2018 version, brushes are saved in the Brushes panel. Where is shows up depends on what you had selected when you created it. If you had a brush inside of a group selected at the time you saved a new brush, the new brush will get saved inside of the same group.
The problem is that occasionally when I move brush presets around I accidentally dump it into one of many, many folders that I have by mistake. So if I don't know which I it fell into, then I have slog through all the folders to look for the brush preset.
Interesting. Can't believe how obscure these things can get. It's got to be a fairly common problem, certainly is for any Designer I know. Sooner or later you need to get the REAL location of assets and these are available, just not from Adobe- usually you have to get the intel from other Creatives via Google or from helpful forum folks like Ged
I have to assume it installs the brushes into the package contents for the application itself. Nothing else seems to change in file size after the install. I just want to ensure that the 350+MB of space used in the Megapack is actually removed if I delete the brush group. Permanently deleting the original .abr file does nothing. The brushes still load when I re-open PS. It's definitely copied somewhere...
The brushes doesn't show up for me there. Finder is good at locating pretty much any indexed file quickly. If I run a system-wide search, the only results that come back are the original .abr files that are in my Downloads folder. If I permanently delete those, the brushes still work. So they're somewhere, just not in the Presets/Brushes folder.
If you make new brush presets and/or groups, they exist within whatever Photoshop uses as house keeping drive space. They are not stored as .abr files until saved with the Preset Manager. I wonder if that is what is happening here?
I'm about ready to jump off of the Photoshop ship for good but I need to know where the data for things like brushes are stored. Rather than taking the long way around by importing one brush at a time I'd rather dump them lot or point the program to my brushes folder and have them there. I found the plugins folder but looked all over, including in the App Data folder for where other bits are stored to no avail.
I don't know if there is a video for this but to import an abr file as a brush category just click on the four line "hamburger" menu at the top right of the Brushes Studio Panel & select the "Import Brushes..." item. Navigate to wherever your abr file is & open it.
It's still pretty much the same as what R C-R said, the only difference is 'raster_brushes.propcol' is stored in %AppData%\Affinity\Photo\1.0\user\ . However I'd also leave this folder alone and use the Affinity Photo interface to import and export (backup) things like brushes, macros, swatches, etc.
To import brushes, click the hamburger icon in the top-right corner of the Brushes panel and go to 'Import Brushes'. You can select multiple *.afbrushes or *.abr files at a time and import them all at once. Once imported they will appear in the Brushes panel under their own categories. It's worth mentioning that you can only export brushes from Affinity Photo as .afbrushes, not .abr.
If you import a lot of brushes at a time, it may take a while before the 'Brushes Imported Successfully' dialogue box appears, so give it time to import them (especially if they are high-res brushes).
Thanks so much. I have quite a few of "Rons" brushes that are sold at DAZ3D stuff like Waves, Fog, Water, Grunge and so forth and so on. Since I do work in the CG industry I need access to those and other brushes for creating body and facial hair and stuff like that. So thanks. I'm glad I can import in many brushes at the same time. Not too worried about the time thing, I can go watch a YouTube vid, check emails or forum posts while I wait....
Hello, Created a new brush category but it does not populate. I import the ABR file, get a successful Import screen, but no brushes in the category or anywhere else. Where else do I look?. This is so annoying. Currently I have to generate in PSD the brush work, export then import to Affinity. Not a good way to work. Please advise...
Thanks!
Just found out about the Persona selections and can see the brushes, but when I try to use it doesn't show anything. Marching ants but not the brush image....
When you click on one of the brush sets, Photoshop will give you two options, to either add this new brush set to your existing brushes or to replace the existing brushes, click Append to add them, or OK to replace them. For my example I just clicked OK to replace the existing brushes with the new set.
Ulrich, I sometimes worry about putting really basic tutorials up because I know that a good number of the readers are fairly skilled in PS, but every once in a while I try to get back to the basics. Thanks for the comment.
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