Adobe CS4 Workspaces File Paths
if you are a user of adobe’s creative suite, especially version 3 or 4, you may have encountered the same problems with the interfaces that i have. an overwhelming amount of features requires an increasingly complicated palette system. sure, adobe comes around from time to time and makes it a little easier and more consistent again, but still: palettes floating everywhere. so what can you do in order to not go insane? you arrange, show and hide functions and features to fit your needs. and hopefully you end up with an interface, that is a little easier to use and helps you do what you do the most, whether it be coding actionscript in flash, retouche in photoshop or layout with indesign.
if you work in an office like i do, sometimes people other that yourself use your computer. maybe their computer broke or they need to access some of the work you have been doing, get some files. whatever. it’s all cool until they go into one of your creative suite applications. because they have probably adjusted their own CS on their own computer in a totally different way, they start to rearrange palettes, show features you have never even used before and hide tools that are important to you but not them. the next day you and up with a creative suite nightmare and have to do your whole adjusting and fitting again. but fret not: adobe has stepped up and given us the possibility to save our customizations and save them into “workspaces”
so whenever somebody messes up your photoshop, you reset the interface to what you saved and go on.
but easier said than done: i have installed and reinstalled the CS so many times i can’t even count them and never have i remembered to save my precious workspace adjustments. why? because i forgot and didn’t know where the actual files are located. so recently (when i was installing once again) i took the time and dug around in the file system and now present you my findings, which are the file paths for adobe’s creative suite 4’s workspace files.
i can only recommend you take the time to save your workspaces once, zip them and mail them to your gmail account or wherever and never worry about losing them again. i know i won’t.
the files sometimes have an XML extension or no extension at all and are usually named just like the entry in your workspaces menu. i hope this helps somebody.
you may also want to take the time to marvel at the wonderful work that adobe has done with cosistency in this matter. i have not found two applications that share a pattern concerning these paths, they are all totally arbitrary concatenations of program names, versions and language abbreviations. thank you adobe for this collage of randomness …NOT!
photoshop:
OSX: /Users/{USERNAME}/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop CS4 Settings/Workspaces/
WIN: C:\Documents and Settings\{USERNAME}\Application Data\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS4\Adobe Photoshop CS4 Settings\WorkSpaces
illustrator:
OSX: /Users/{USERNAME}/Library/Preferences/Adobe Illustrator CS4
Settings/en_US/Workspaces/
WIN: C:\Documents and Settings\{USERNAME}\Application Data\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CS4 Settings\en_GB\Workspaces
indesign:
OSX: /Users/{USERNAME}/Library/Preferences/Adobe InDesign/Version 6.0/en_US/Workspaces/
WIN: C:\Documents and Settings\{USERNAME}\Application Data\Adobe\InDesign\Version 6.0\en_GB\Workspaces
flash:
OSX: /Users/{USERNAME}/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Flash CS4/en/Configuration/Workspace/
WIN: C:\Documents and Settings\{USERNAME}\Local Settings\Application Data\Adobe\Flash CS4\en\Configuration\Workspace
bridge:
OSX:/Users/{USERNAME}/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Bridge CS4/Workspaces/
WIN: C:\Dokumente und Einstellungen\{USERNAME}\Application Data\Adobe\Bridge CS4\Workspaces
