Are macros not bought at the Affinity Store lost when I uninstall and then reinstall Affinity Photo?

[alecspra]

If I uninstall and then reinstall Affinity Photo, do I lose the macros that I created or that I obtained outside the Affinity Store? Anything else that I might lose? If I do lose the macros, is there a way I can back them up on my computer and upload them later? Where are the actual macros stored anyway? Thank you!

 

[walt.farrell]

What OS do you run?

[alecspra]

Big Sur and will be updating to Monterrey when it becomes available

[alecspra]

I figured it out. I exported the macros to my desktop and then load them back in after the reinstall.

[walt.farrell]

11 hours ago, alecspra said:

I figured it out. I exported the macros to my desktop and then load them back in after the reinstall.

I'm not sure the Desktop is a safe place for that, but I'm not a Mac user. 
 

[alecspra]

It's only a temporary hold.

[Old Bruce]

9 minutes ago, alecspra said:

It's only a temporary hold.

I made a directory/folder that I named Affinity stuff in my Mac's Documents directory. All the templates that I make are in there, as are the Keyboard shortcuts and the Swatches palettes and brushes etc that I want to save. One folder to back up when you upgrade to Monterrey

[R C-R]

8 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

I'm not sure the Desktop is a safe place for that, but I'm not a Mac user. 

It is as safe as any other folder, other than since the desktop folder is always visible in Finder it might be a bit easier to accidentally move one of its items to the trash via the right-click contextual menu where the second item is "Move to Trash."

Personally, I have an "Affinity Work" folder at the top level of my user account's home folder, & in it a subfolder named "zz BRUSHES, PATTERNS, PALLETS, MACROS, FONTS" with subfolders for each of those items. (The "zz " prefix is just there so it sorts near the bottom of the Finder's list view.)

I copy essentially every item of each of those types I have downloaded into these folders, so it is fairly large (about 9 GB currently) but I have lots of free space on my SSD so that is not an issue for me.

[alecspra]

Those are great suggestions. Thanks. I did not know you could save things like presets I created in a folder outside of Affinity. Where are do I find those files within Affinity PHoto so i can also store them in a separate folder? 

[TomM1]

On 9/23/2021 at 3:57 PM, alecspra said:

Big Sur and will be updating to Monterrey when it becomes available

Why the rush to install Monterey?

[alecspra]

No rush. But it will happen at some point.

[Petar Petrenko]

On 9/24/2021 at 4:05 PM, Old Bruce said:

I made a directory/folder that I named Affinity stuff in my Mac's Documents directory.

So, it would be great if we can tell to any Affinity app to create a link (in the Preferences) where to search for the items it supports and install them every time on the fly. This way we can avoid the confusion if one needs pixel brushes to install or vector ones and so on.

[PaulEC]

I don't know if it's similar on Macs, but on Windows you can save the appdata files (I use a flash drive, but I  suppose you could just save to a folder elsewhere) then paste them back, after the new installation.

[Petar Petrenko]

13 minutes ago, PaulEC said:

I don't know if it's similar on Macs, but on Windows you can save the appdata files (I use a flash drive, but I  suppose you could just save to a folder elsewhere) then paste them back, after the new installation.

But you need to know where are these folders inside Affinity folder structure for each app.

Beside, you have items that can be installed into one only and some others into more.

[Ron P.]

11 minutes ago, NNN said:

But you need to know where are these folders inside Affinity folder structure for each app.

PaulIEC told you where. They are located (in Windows) under the AppData folders.

More specific for Photo: C:\Users\ronpe\AppData\Roaming\Affinity\Photo\1.0\user

For Designer: C:\Users\ronpe\AppData\Roaming\Affinity\Designer\1.0\user

NOTE: If you installed the apps to a different drive, ie; not C:, then you would follow that path.

You might ask why the Roaming and not the Local or LocalLow? I found this explanation helpful;

Quote

Local Folder

The Local folder cannot be moved and contains files including saved games, browser data, video card profiles, Microsoft history and more. If you look at the Local folder, odds are you'll see a folder for every program you've installed.

LocalLow Folder

The LocalLow folder also cannot be moved. LocalLow isn't used as much, has a lower integrity level and usually doesn't take up much space. The files found here are often used when running any sort of virtual machine or sandbox, including protected modes with your browsers.

Roaming Folder

The Roaming folder can be moved, and you'll notice that its contents are similar to the Local folder. This folder can be synced with a server and contains a lot of your browser settings, log files, and more. If you're looking to backup your application settings, this is the only folder of the three that's of any use to you.

 

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, NNN said:

But you need to know where are these folders inside Affinity folder structure for each app.

This FAQ article tells you where they are:

 

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, Ron P. said:

NOTE: If you installed the apps to a different drive, ie; not C:, then you would follow that path.

No. No matter where you install the applications, your Windows AppData folder is on drive C. You can move pieces of it to another drive manually, and use symlinks to allow the applications to find it, but unless you do that it remains on C even if the application is on another drive.

I provided some information about doing that here. Note that I'm not recommending it, and I'm sure Serif would say it's not supported if anything goes wrong.

Something similar should work on Macs, but I can't test it or provide any information.

[Old Bruce]

21 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Something similar should work on Macs, but I can't test it or provide any information.

It should work, but I really don't know what happens with the current state of affairs with the different flavours of Sandboxing in different versions of the Mac OS. Could well brick the applications.

Oh, and I am not going to test it either.

[R C-R]

41 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

It should work, but I really don't know what happens with the current state of affairs with the different flavours of Sandboxing in different versions of the Mac OS. Could well brick the applications.

If we are still talking about where to find where the apps store the macros & other user data folders, it doesn't matter where the app is stored. What does matter is where the Mac user's Home folder is stored, because no matter which store the apps come from, it is in one of that folder's subfolder where all those files are stored.

[v_kyr]

Affinity Store version: 

• Affinity Photo: ~/Library/Application Support/Affinity Photo/user/macros.propcol

Mac App Store version: 

• Affinity Photo: ~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto/Data/Library/Application Support/user/macros.propcol

Mac App Store version ( Big Sur ) :

• Affinity Photo: ~/Library/Containers/Affinity Photo/Data/Library/Application Support/user/macros.propcol

 

And of course using some custom links/symlinks ("ln -s /source/folder /destination/folder") here then under MacOS (a Unix flavor), should usually work as expected.

[R C-R]

20 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

And of course using some custom links/symlinks ("ln -s /source/folder /destination/folder") here then under MacOS (a Unix flavor), should usually work as expected.

Just keep in mind that "usually" is not the same as always. It may not work when updating the app or when resetting some parts of the app.

[alecspra]

Thanks for those paths to find where Mac stores the AF data.

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

Just keep in mind that "usually" is not the same as always. It may not work when updating the app or when resetting some parts of the app.

When modifying the Affinity installations filesystem with own custom (sym)links, it's always your own responsibility to take care of that. So it always makes sense and is wise to keep some custom unlink/move back/restore scripts for your initial link purposes.