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Where are brushes and other goodies are stored??


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I'm about ready to jump off of the Photoshop ship for good but I need to know where the data for things like brushes are stored.  Rather than taking the long way around by importing one brush at a time I'd rather dump them lot or point the program to my brushes folder and have them there. I found the plugins folder but looked all over, including in the App Data folder for where other bits are stored to no avail.

Thanks. 

Been watching tutorials off and on all day long.  Quite impressed.

Richard

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The location for brushes & the like vary depending on if you are using the Mac or Windows version, but there is no brushes folder as such, so what you want to do won't work. On Macs, the per user brushes are stored in a deeply nested subfolder in ~/Library/Containers/ with the filename "raster_brushes.propcol." This file contains all the brush categories & the brushes in them, but it is a binary encoded file, using an undocumented proprietary format.

 

The good news (of a sort) is Affinity Photo can import .abr files as brush categories so you do not have to import the brushes one at a time.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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I don't know if there is a video for this but to import an abr file as a brush category just click on the four line "hamburger" menu at the top right of the Brushes Studio Panel & select the "Import Brushes..." item. Navigate to wherever your abr file is & open it.

 

On Macs, you can also just drop the abr file onto the workspace but I am not sure if this works on Windows as well.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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1 hour ago, RAMWolff1356 said:

Ah, should have said.  I'm on Windows 10.  Brush categories will work.  IS there a YouTube tutorial for this or is it pretty simple to figure out with a few words? 

Thank you!

It's still pretty much the same as what R C-R said, the only difference is 'raster_brushes.propcol' is stored in %AppData%\Affinity\Photo\1.0\user\ .  However I'd also leave this folder alone and use the Affinity Photo interface to import and export (backup) things like brushes, macros, swatches, etc.

To import brushes, click the hamburger icon in the top-right corner of the Brushes panel and go to 'Import Brushes'.  You can select multiple *.afbrushes or *.abr files at a time and import them all at once.  Once imported they will appear in the Brushes panel under their own categories.  It's worth mentioning that you can only export brushes from Affinity Photo as .afbrushes, not .abr.

If you import a lot of brushes at a time, it may take a while before the 'Brushes Imported Successfully' dialogue box appears, so give it time to import them (especially if they are high-res brushes).

001.thumb.jpg.6ab1a4ade138d6fc1347df90e49a6189.jpg

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Thanks so much.  I have quite a few of "Rons" brushes that are sold at DAZ3D stuff like Waves, Fog, Water, Grunge and so forth and so on.  Since I do work in the CG industry I need access to those and other brushes for creating body and facial hair and stuff like that.  So thanks.  I'm glad I can import in many brushes at the same time.  Not too worried about the time thing, I can go watch a YouTube vid, check emails or forum posts while I wait.... :)

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  • 2 months later...

Hello,  Created a new brush category but it does not populate.  I import the ABR file, get a successful Import screen, but no brushes in the category or anywhere else. Where else do I look?.  This is so annoying.  Currently I have to generate in PSD the brush work,  export then import to Affinity.  Not a good way to work.  Please advise...
Thanks! 

Just found out about the Persona selections and can see the brushes, but when I try to use it doesn't show anything.  Marching ants but not the brush image....

 

Edited by Maggie Rose
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11 hours ago, Maggie Rose said:

Just found out about the Persona selections and can see the brushes, but when I try to use it doesn't show anything.  Marching ants but not the brush image....

Are you sure you are using a paint brush & not a selection tool?

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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