Restore Actions from crashed PC

[Wayne Daniels Photography]

My Windows 10 machine crashed and I had to reinstall all my software. The drive that had all my CS5 files is intact and I can copy over anything I need. But what & where are they?  Do I just need the Actions? Any ideas?

[D Fosse]

Actions are stored in the general Preferences - more precisely in the Settings folder under your user account on the C drive.

To back up actions in case you need to reinstall or reset preferences, save them out to a separate location of your choice. You do this from the fly-out menu in the Actions Panel. This is also where you reload them after reinstall.

[Akash Sharma]

Hi Waynedaniels,

Please refer the article Migrate presets in Photoshop CC and let us know if that helps.

If using the similar version of Ps on the new computer, You can also run Migration script. Refer Move actions, presets, and workspaces in Photoshop CS4, CS5, CS5.1

Regards,

Akash

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

Hi Akash,

Below is a screenshot from my CS6 Extended.

I have actions in my actions palette.

I have saved actions to my default action preset folder.

Why are they not visible in the export presets menu?

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

OK, I have answered my own question:

FAQ: How do I migrate my saved presets from an earlier version of Photoshop or import/export them?

It appears that my expectation was wrong:

/Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS6/Presets/Actions

When it should have been:

/Users/currentuser/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop CS6/Presets/Actions

This is of course counter intuitive and makes no sense, as this folder is NOT the default location when saving an action from the action palette! Why Adobe, why?

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

I have just added a blogpost detailing the finer points of action file saves, migrations etc.

Prepression: Photoshop – Custom Action File Backup & Migration

[Stephen_A_Marsh · Accepted solution]

Look for this:

C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Photoshop\???\Adobe Photoshop ??? Settings\Actions Palette.psp

However I would always recommend that you manually save out individual actions rather than having all of your eggs in one basket!!!

Re: How can MAC users restore the actions from the previous PS CC to 2017 CC?

[Wayne Daniels Photography]

Thank you!!

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

My pleasure, now please go and save all of your actions sets individually from within Photoshop’s action palette, so that you have proper .atn files! :]