Transfer Affinity Photo export persona pre-sets from one Mac to the other?

[All Media Lab]

Hi,

How do I transfer Affinity Photo export persona pre-sets from one Mac to the other?

Thanks,

David

[v_kyr]

Hmm, you have to identify where these presets do reside/are stored (location + filename) on your system. Then copy them over to the same place on the other Mac.

The help system tells only few rudimentary things about this ...

• Export options panel

Quote

To save custom settings as a preset:

1. Set the export options as desired.
2. Click Panel Preferences, and select Create preset from the pop-up menu.
3. Enter a name and click OK.

The new preset is added to the end of the Preset pop-up menu and is also accessible from the Export dialog.

Hint:  You can delete and rename custom presets by selecting the appropriate option from the Panel Preferences pop-up menu.

... so not sure which file those are overall stored in then. - See also probably related where some other presets are stored then ...

 

[All Media Lab]

Thanks for the links, but I still don't know how to do it!

[Lee D]

The linked article above (What exactly do the Clear user Data options clear?) provides you with the location of where the file is stored based on which app and store version you have installed.

So within the user folder will be a Develop.propcol file, this is the one to backup and then copy to the same location on the other system.

[All Media Lab]

What user folder are you referring to and what is the location on my Mac? I have the Affinity version of photo.

[Pšenda]

4 minutes ago, All Media Lab said:

What user folder are you referring to and what is the location on my Mac? 

Isn't it listed in the link mentioned above?

[All Media Lab]

Like I said before, it is not there!

Are you sure this is about the latest Mac OS?

This is the Application Support folder, I have the Affinity Store version of Photo.

[Pšenda]

Maybe Show hidden folders?
At least in Windows, some system folders are hidden from the user (so they don't do more harm than good) and must be allowed to be seen.

[All Media Lab]

There are no hidden folders with the name Affinity Photo

[v_kyr]

• How to find the path of a file on Mac

• How to Find Applications Folder on Mac

• ... etc.

Open Terminal.app or download and open iTerm2 , then perform a search (ls) after it...

-->   ls ~/Library/"Application Support/Affinity Photo"/user/

adjustments.propcol            glyph_browser.dat              text_styles.dat
assets.propcol                 grid_presets.propcol           tone_map.propcol
croppresets.propcol            macros.propcol                 tool_settings.propcol
develop.propcol                objects.propcol                vector_brushes.propcol
doc_spread_presets.propcol     objectstyles.propcol           visibility_options.dat
expressions_presets.propcol    raster_brushes.propcol         ws.dat
fills.propcol                  raster_brushes.propcol_backup1
font_map.dat                   shapes.propcol

-->  ls ~/Library/"Application Support/Affinity Photo"/user/develop.propcol

develop.propcol

-->  cp  ~/Library/"Application Support/Affinity Photo"/user/develop.propcol  /Users/username/Downloads

 

[All Media Lab]

Did you see the image of the folder? In my previous post? 

I show it one more time! This is the folder described in the above post!

[v_kyr]

5 minutes ago, All Media Lab said:

Did you see the image of the folder? In my previous post? 

Look at my addition above, aka ...

Open Terminal.app or download and open iTerm2 , then perform a search (ls) after it...

-->   ls ~/Library/"Application Support/Affinity Photo"/user/

adjustments.propcol            glyph_browser.dat              text_styles.dat
assets.propcol                 grid_presets.propcol           tone_map.propcol
croppresets.propcol            macros.propcol                 tool_settings.propcol
develop.propcol                objects.propcol                vector_brushes.propcol
doc_spread_presets.propcol     objectstyles.propcol           visibility_options.dat
expressions_presets.propcol    raster_brushes.propcol         ws.dat
fills.propcol                  raster_brushes.propcol_backup1
font_map.dat                   shapes.propcol

-->  ls ~/Library/"Application Support/Affinity Photo"/user/develop.propcol

develop.propcol

-->  cp  ~/Library/"Application Support/Affinity Photo"/user/develop.propcol  /Users/username/Downloads

The last "cp" command copies the develop.propcol to your user Download folder!

[R C-R]

@All Media Lab, try this:

With a Finder window open, click on the "Go" menu item & hold down the Option key. You should see "Library" magically appear in the list. This is necessary because the home folder's Library folder is hidden by default.

Alternately, if you want it to always appear when Finder is showing your home folder, navigate to your home folder in Finder, & either click on Show View Options in the Finder's View menu or use the keyboard shortcut CMD+J to show the view options for your home folder. At the bottom of the options you should see a checkbox for "Show Library Folder. Check that & your home folder Library folder will always show up in Finder windows diaplaying your home folder.

[GaryLearnTech]

Hi @All Media Lab - you're missing something subtle in @v_kyr's posts.  There are (at least) three different Library folders in different locations on any machine running macOS.

1.  /System/Library

The central one is located in the System folder and is pretty much exclusively reserved for use by the operating system, so I'll say nothing more about it here.  If you're curious, look but don't touch!  

2.  /Library

This central one is commonly used by apps to store global preferences, support files and various other resources.  This is available to all users with a login on your computer and provides a central location for commonly accessed settings - one copy that can be read (and sometimes written to) by any user.

The / character at the beginning of each of those paths indicates that you start at the top level of "Macintosh HD" and click down from there.  That's commonly referred to as the root of your file system.

3.  However, over and above those two central Library folders, every user with a login on any Mac has their own user Library folder too, located in the Users folder.  That allows each user to have their own individual preferences for how an app is configured, their own individual set of installed fonts and so on.  Written out longhand, an individual user's library folder path might look like this

/Users/gary/Library

You can read that as saying from double-clicking on your Macintosh HD icon (ie, the root of your drive), then double-click the Users folder, then double-click the gary folder and then locate the Library folder within that.

Because this is a standard structure, the /Users/yourname part is commonly replaced with the tilde character and your home directory would simply be written as ~/.  Taking that one step further, we get the path to anyone's 'personal' Library folder as:

~/Library

- - - -

So - there are two similar but very different Library paths available: 

1. /Library/ 
2. ~/Library/

Many of the same sub-folders can be found in both Libraries, so that can be confusing if you take a wrong turning.  For example, you're likely to have each of the following folders in both locations: Application Support, Caches, Fonts, Screen Savers - and many others.

Now, armed with this distinction, if you look back at v_kyr's posts, you'll see the ~ prefixxing each path, so it's the personal Library that's indicated there.  However, your screenshot shows the path at the bottom of the window as the central /Library folder - the one located at the root of your Macintosh HD.  And that's why you couldn't find what you were after - you were in the wrong Library folder…

Hope this helps?

[v_kyr]

  

1 hour ago, GaryLearnTech said:

So - there are two similar but very different Library paths available: 

1. /Library/ 
2. ~/Library/

Many of the same sub-folders can be found in both Libraries, so that can be confusing if you take a wrong turning.  For example, you're likely to have each of the following folders in both locations: Application Support, Caches, Fonts, Screen Savers - and many others.

Yes! - And for unexperienced users the confusion can even be topped, since there's another /Library/ folder under the Affinity related path ...

• ~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto/Data/Library/

... which in turn then contains also the linked folders from the users ~/Library/ path, so as symbolic links then (shown purple/magenta colored below) ...

BTW, the used "ll" command shown here is just a common alias for the usual "ls -l" list directory contents command and thus an own personal defined shortcut (alias ll='ls -l') in my bash shell based ".bash_profile" config settings file. - So the whole would usully more general be typed in instead as ...

• ls -l  ~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto/Data/Library/

... here!

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, GaryLearnTech said:

/Users/gary/Library

You can read that as saying from double-clicking on your Macintosh HD icon (ie, the root of your drive), then double-click the Users folder, then double-click the gary folder and then locate the Library folder within that.

Note that when doing this, you will not see the Library folder in your home folder unless (as I wrote above) you have enabled the "Show Library Folder" item in the view options for your home folder. Your home folder is the one with the House icon in the Macintosh HD > Users folder.

It looks like this: