After upgrading to Affinity Photo2 where are my 3rd party brushes?

[blackxacto]

Sigh.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, blackxacto said:

... unless this file never gets larger. Does anyone know for sure?

All I tell you is that on my Mac the size of the V1 raster_brushes.propcol file does get larger over time. Currently for AP V1 it is about 377 MB on my Mac. In my Time Machine backups dating back a several years it was about ½ that size.

2 hours ago, blackxacto said:

SERIF ATTENTION: do you see how complex you have made restoring my brush collection. Why can't they be listed as separate objects in a Preset Brush folder?

I'm not sure what you mean by separate objects. Do you mean separate files for each brush or brush category collection? Regardless, how would that simplify restoring what could be a very large number of individual files from your backups, assuming you have saved them? If you are actually talking about combining your V1 brushes with your existing V2 ones (IOW, merging two sets of brush files into one for use in V2) the procedure @Lee_T mentioned would do that, assuming you have V1 & its per user support files installed on your Mac.

As it is, *.propcol files reduce file size overhead, freeing up more storage space on your computer, improving responsiveness when selecting, duplicating, & creating  new brushes, & greatly simplify & speed up creating & maintaining backups.

The problem here seems to be that either you somehow never backed up your per user raster_brushes.propcol file containing the full set of V1 raster brushes or possibly that you as yet have not found the correct one.

[blackxacto]

If they were separate I could go to a few weeks ago and drag and drop them into V2. As it is, there is no V1 version with all the brushes. I dont have the .propcal file from the week before i Trashed V1, but I do have from 2 weeks before to 2022. None of these show the entire collection. I cant believe the entire collection was not backed up until the last one that was trashed. I’m telling you i have one at a time replaced all the .propcal brush files one at a time. NONE ARE COMPLETE. NONE are larger than 148.4 MB. If i had individual brush files, TM will copy them all. That did not happen w propcal.

[firstdefence]

If Affinity have a propcol file for all affinity associated brushes and any abr brushes can be located in an imported brushes folder, maybe this way you have the best of both worlds. Not sure how having a proprietary file that has to compress and decompress files is space saving when it has to copy the files into that propcol file, wouldn't it make sense to simply target a brushes folder like they do with plugins?

[R C-R]

9 hours ago, blackxacto said:

If they were separate I could go to a few weeks ago and drag and drop them into V2

Drag them from where? Either the brushes are backed up or they are not. The propcol file contains all the available pixel brushes in one file so how would improve anything if they were in what could be hundreds of individual files?

9 hours ago, blackxacto said:

If i had individual brush files, TM will copy them all. That did not happen w propcal.

All I can tell you about that is TM has backed up all my propcol files for all the Affinity apps without problems, & as I said the V1 raster_brushes.propcol file grew in size over time. As far as I can tell, the latest backup includes every raster brush I currently have in V1.

In addition, as it is, you have the option of exporting brush categories from the V1 Brushes studio panel as *.afbrushes files & importing them into the V2 one, but it is up to you to do that before you trash the app or its support files.

So as far as I'm able to understand it, Serif had done everything it can to make to make both backing up the per user stuff & transitioning from V1 to V2 as easy as possible. I don't know why isn't working for you.

[walt.farrell]

@blackxacto: I don't think you have told us where (original file path) you are finding raster_brushes.propcol files in your TM backups. (And, also, where you installed V1 from, Mac App Store or Affinity Store.)

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

@blackxacto: I don't think you have told us where (original file path) you are finding raster_brushes.propcol files in your TM backups. (And, also, where you installed V1 from, Mac App Store or Affinity Store.)

It occurs to me that the problem might be that he is looking in the Affinity Designer or Affinity Publisher V1 TM backups for the raster_brushes.propcol files, which of course will usually not have the same raster brushes as in the Affinity Photo V1 files.

So indeed, the full file path may tell us if that is the problem. BTW @blackxacto, you may already know this but if you do not want to show your user account name in the file path for privacy or security reasons, you can post the file path using the ~/ home folder shortcut, like I have done below for my AP V1 app bought from the Mac App Store:

~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto/Data/Library/Application Support/user/raster_brushes.propcol

For comparison, I bought APub V1 from the Affinity store, so for me the path to it is shorter:

~/Library/Application Support/Affinity Publisher/user/raster_brushes.propcol

[blackxacto]

I chose this backup path for demo, or any backup date, tell me if I am wrong?

What I cannot tell you is why the complete Affinity brush library, including full third party brushes is not in any backups in TM all the way back to 2022. Photoshop backups are always there as individual brushes.

"So as far as I'm able to understand it, Serif had done everything it can to make to make both backing up the per user stuff & transitioning from V1 to V2 as easy as possible. I don't know why isn't working for you."

You must be lucky.

Edited February 24 by blackxacto
clarity

[walt.farrell]

16 minutes ago, blackxacto said:

tell me if I am wrong?

That looks right for Photo V1 assuming you purchased from the Mac App Store.

[R C-R]

4 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

That looks right for Photo V1 assuming you purchased from the Mac App Store.

If it is from the Mac App Store I believe the middle part of the path should be ... /Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto/Data/Library/...., but it just shows as Affinity Photo. I'm not sure why because if it came from the Affinity Store I believe the path should be shorter (like I show in my post above for Affinity Publisher).

@blackxacto, is there any reason you cannot confirm which store you bought AP V1 from? Also, did you do anything unusual in ~/Library/Containers that would explain this?

[blackxacto]

I can find no email proof of purchasing Affinity Photo 1, but the Apple App Store says I bought it 04/15/2018. I have no idea why our path spellings are different. V1 is installed on my iMac now w V2. The path is for brushes in V1 back to 10/13/2022. The file is 148.4MB.

I've not altered the Container folders. Only option dragged the brushes file.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, blackxacto said:

Only option dragged the brushes file.

From where to where?

[blackxacto]

[R C-R]

Are you saying you just dragged a copy from a TM backup to the Desktop? Nothing else?

BTW, it woukd be a lot quicker & simpler just to put the file paths into your reply. No need for videos.

[blackxacto]

Drag it out, then drop it in the folder where it belongs. There is only one folder where it belongs, right? Or maybe you have a second folder?

 

[R C-R]

20 minutes ago, blackxacto said:

Drag it out, then drop it in the folder where it belongs.

Again, what folder did you drag it into? "Where it belongs" tells us nothing useful.

Also, why is the file shown in your video just 15 MB, not the 140+ MB size you mentioned earlier? And if you are going to all the trouble to post it, why doesn't the video show where you dragged & dropped the file?

I don't mind trying to help you sort this out but you really need to try to be more forthcoming about what you have been asked if you want to get this resolved as quickly as possible.

[blackxacto]

RCR, I'm glad you brought this up. Would you kindly help someone else?

[walt.farrell]

11 hours ago, R C-R said:

If it is from the Mac App Store I believe the middle part of the path should be ... /Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto/Data/Library/....,

That path is the "before Big Sur" path. The one that @blackxacto showed is the "after Big Sur" path, according to the V1 FAQ, as I read it:

 

[Return]

Isn't there an app that can search for files on MAC like everywhere on windows?
If so you can search system wide for files by extension and open its location.
Perhaps @loukash has an idea since he's very proficient with these apps on mac.

[blackxacto]

I use Find all Files, and Spotlight

 

[Return]

1 minute ago, blackxacto said:

I use Find all Files, and Spotlight

 

Windows user here so can't tell if it works the same but it is worth the try though.
 

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

That path is the "before Big Sur" path. The one that @blackxacto showed is the "after Big Sur" path, according to the V1 FAQ, as I read it:

Thanks for mentioning that. It occurred to me after I was asked to help someone else that the path would be different, so I did not say anything more about it, but it still does not explain why the file chosen in the video was the 15MB one, apparently copied from the oldest TM backup with the 2022-03 timestamp rather than the most recent one.

It is still unclear where that file was eventually placed so hopefully that will eventually become clear to those trying to help get this resolved.

As a side note, Time Machine includes a builtin restore function that simplifies recovering older file versions to their proper locations.

[loukash]

3 hours ago, Return said:

Perhaps @loukash has an idea since he's very proficient with these apps on mac.

https://findanyfile.app

Can't do without while poking deep inside the system holes that you never should visit amidst night all alone… 

[R C-R]

6 hours ago, Return said:

Windows user here so can't tell if it works the same but it is worth the try though.

FWIW, after entering the Time Machine interface it is possible to use the search field in the same way it can be used in normal Finder windows, & to tell it to search in the TM backups instead of the local startup drive on the Mac, so by using raster_brushes.propcol as the search term, it can show each backup of those files by date, beginning with the most recent backup. As with Finder, it is possible to show the file path at the bottom of the TM window and/or to use Get Info (CMD+i) to show which V1 app it belongs to.

But to save disk space V2 does not store the propcol files on a per app basis like V1 does, so even if a TM backup is found with all the V1 brushes in it, it isn't as simple as copying it to the same relative V2 app support location. What should be done to keep things as simple as possible is to reinstall AP V1, restore its per user support files from the latest TM backup, & then use the V2 reset @Lee_T suggested to migrate the V1 stuff to V2.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

But to save disk space V2 does not store the propcol files on a per app basis like V1 does,

I think it's primarily done that way in V2 to allow brush sharing between the applications, not to save space.