Adobe’s flagship Photoshop received a full version update, which makes the current version, Photoshop CC 2015-5, packed with lots of great features and a performance boost. There’s a lot to be excited about—except their warning about 3rd party plug-ins. Adobe made it clear with a warning message:

VERY IMPORTANT – Photoshop CC 2015.5 is a full version upgrade. As such, you will need to install your 3rd party plug-ins for them to work with CC 2015.5.

Reinstalling numerous plugins is a very tedious task. Adobe did note they have been working with 3rd party plug-in developers to use a shared Creative Cloud location for plug-ins. This will allow updated versions of their plug-ins to load in future versions of Photoshop CC (e.g., CC 2016/2017) without having to re-install. That’s great news for the future, but what about now? Luckily, there’s a quick solution that works with most plug-ins.

Simple Solution: Copy your Photoshop Plug-ins folder

Navigate to your Adobe folder and look for your previous version of Photoshop—or select your current version, if you haven’t upgraded yet.

Windows users can find the Adobe folder inside the Program Files folder.

Mac users can find the Adobe folder inside the Applications folder

Copy the the contents of the plug-ins folder and paste them into the plug-ins folder of Photoshop CC 2015-5.

Now, when you launch Photoshop CC 2015-5, most of your 3rd party plug-ins are back!


Extra tip:

The only plug-in that was a little tricky was onOne. I copied all files that started with ON from inside the previous version folder and pasted them into the current version. When I launched the plug-in from inside Photoshop CC 2015-5, onOne performed a quick update. You can try this or just wait for the official update. The company is really good at getting updates out fast.