Photoshop upgrade tips: CS to CS2

Adobe Photoshop is an extremely powerful photo-manipulation software for photographers, web professionals, and just about anyone looking for high-end photo-editing capabilities.

I recently upgraded from Photoshop CS, to Photoshop CS2, on Mac OS X - and what follows is a brief explanation of how I transferred many of my saved settings and preferences from CS, and carried them over to CS2. This saved me a lot of time.

Scanner

The first thing I did was setup my scanner in CS2.

The quickest way to do this was to access the existing Plug-Ins from CS.

In the Finder, navigate to the Applications folder, and then choose Adobe Photoshop CS > Plug-Ins:

In this folder, you’ll see a bunch of different folders for various Photoshop plug-ins. Choose Import/Export.

Here we see our scanner plug-in file, which we initally copied there from the software that came with the scanner itself. We can use that same file for CS2.

Just copy it over to the Photoshop CS2 Plug-Ins folder, which is similarly under Applications > Adobe Photoshop CS2 > Plug-Ins > Import/Export.

Then after you restart Photoshop CS2, navigate to File > Import, and you should see your scanner:

Back in CS, I also had a keyboard shortcut set up for launching my scanner, so I didn’t have to choose File > Import every time. I had my keyboard shortcut set up as an Action - but in CS2, I decided to make this process more intuitive, and just create a Keyboard Shortcut. Under Window > Workspace > Keyboard Shortcuts & Menus - I designated the Import (to my scanner plug-in) command as the F9 key. All set!

Actions

I also had a lot of Actions set up in CS, to help streamline redundant tasks. I didn’t want to have to re-create every one of those Actions in CS2.

In the Finder, navigate to your home folder, then go to Library > Preferences > Adobe Photoshop CS Settings:

You’ll see about a dozen separate files that have preferences and settings saved.

We want Actions Palette.psp:

Copy that file to the corresponding folder for CS2: Library > Preferences > Adobe Photoshop CS2 Settings.

When it asks you if you want to overwrite the existing Actions Palette file, click Yes.

After you restart Photoshop, you should see your custom actions from CS, in the Actions palette of CS2:

All set!

Patterns

In CS, I also had a few custom Patterns set up:

Once again, in Library > Preferences > Adobe Photoshop CS Settings, copy the Patterns preferences files to the corresponding CS2 directory: Library > Preferences > Adobe Photoshop CS2 Settings:

Now your custom patterns won’t have to be re-created in CS2.

Wrap-up

As you can see, on Mac OS X, it is very easy to upgrade your Photoshop software, without having to “re-invent the wheel,” each time.

Adobe makes it very simple to “carry over” your preferences and settings.