Plugins don't copy across to updated version of Photoshop

[grahamm83554906]

Hi,

I've updated PS to 2019. In the past when I've updated to the following year's version none of my plugins has copied across and I've had to manually copy them over e.g. when I updated to 2018 I had to copy the plugins in the 2017 Plugins folder and paste them into the 2018 Plugins folder. I've done the same this time, copying them into the 2019 Plugins folder and they seem to be working. However I've now got remnants of the 2015, 2015.5, 2017 and 2018 installations taking up about 1Gb of disk space. If I try to delete any of them the plugins in the 2019 installation stop working, even though they're copied directly from the last years folder.

I'm using Windows 7 pro.

Has anyone else had this problem, or knows how to prune out the old folders?

Graham

[davescm]

Hi

Try using them in the common folder which will be seen by all versions. See this link for details (scroll down to locate plug in folders):

Photoshop plug-ins troubleshooting

Dave

[Noel Carboni]

You didn't drag a shortcut this time rather than copy the files did you?  Photoshop will follow a shortcut during plug-in enumeration, even though the files still exist in their original locations.

Also, some plug-ins have additional files that their installers put into or under the Photoshop program folder.  For example, there could be .dll files right in C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop CC 2018 that the plug-in needs.  I have used a file and folder comparison tool like Beyond Compare in the past to ferret out such files.  There are a whole litany of them for OnOne software, for example.

Ideally, you'll want to get an updated installer from the maker of the plug-ins that knows where the common plug-ins folder mentioned by davescm above is, or at least know about the latest Photoshop version.

-Noel

[grahamm83554906]

Hi Dave and Noel

Many thanks for your quick answers! I'll give that a try. I never thought of a common location path. It might mean reinstalling rather than copying but I'll try both.

Graham