Backing Up and Storing Your Photoshop Actions and Overlays

Today I want to talk to you about storing your Photoshop Actions somewhere besides your computer.  For example, in your cloud storage, or on an external hard drive or jump drive.

This is really, really important for you to do!  I cannot stress how important this is because you never know when something terrible will happen that causes you to lose this information on your computer.  We hear from customers at Pretty Presets & Actions every day who haven't properly backed up their Actions and end up losing them.

It doesn't even have to be that dramatic!  For example, maybe you just purchased a new computer and you want to move all of your Pretty Photoshop Actions and Overlays.   To do this you're going to need the original file folders that contain the .atn and .jpeg files.

For these reasons, it's a really good practice to backup your Pretty Actions & Overlay files to a location that's separate from your main computer and hard drive.  I.T. professionals are usually going to recommend to backing up your files with the 3-2-1 method.  This is storage across 3 devices, on 2 different types of devices such as one computer and one external hard drive or jump drive, and in addition 1 off-site location such as cloud storage.

One option for storing your Photoshop files mentioned above is through cloud-based storage companies such as ICloud, Google Drive and Dropbox.  These companies will often give you free storage up to a certain amount of gigabytes.  And since you're Pretty Actions & Overlays come in a zip file, the free accounts that these companies offer typically provide plenty of storage for your backups.  All you'll need is your original .atn and .jpeg files and you'll be able to upload those directly to your cloud storage.

Another option is to transfer them to an external hard drive or jump drive.  You should start by storing all of your original zip files that you downloaded from Pretty Actions in a convenient and easy to locate spot on your hard drive.  I store mine in my Documents folder, and then within that a Pretty Actions Collections folder.  From there you will be able to see all of your original action file folders.  To transfer them, simply select the folders, then drag and drop them to your external device.  Alternatively, you can select them, then copy and paste the folders to your external drive.

So there you have it!  These are two really simple ways that you can store all of your Pretty Photoshop Actions as well as your Vivid Sky Cloud Overlays, Fairy Actions and Overlays, Falling Leaves, Bubbles and Flower Overlays so you can be protected in case of any future computer malfunctions.

Backing Up Your Photoshop Actions - Video Tutorial