Moving Existing Plugins to "outside" Plugin Folder

[rnbluvva]

I searched the forums for some tips on what to do about existing plugins in the Photoshop Plugin folder and wanting to move them when I upgrade Phtoshop. I found a thread where Danny and a few others have suggested to make an 'outside' plugins folder and point to that in the PS preferences file.

My question is: where can I put this outside folder? I have most of my programs on Drive "E" and not the main drive C. Could I copy my existing Photoshop Plugins folder contents to this outside folder on drive E and then point to it via preferences and still have the plugins work?

I am considering getting Photoshop CS2 and was wondering how all that would work with the plugins etc. Do I have to reinstall them all? It would be great if I could just copy and paste them all to this outside folder, but I see from reading some others ran into missing .dll issues.

I have a lot of plugins that I have installed, but I am pretty sure I have all the install disks, so I could just reinstall them. It might take a while tho!

Also, can I just copy and paste all existing files in the Pattens, Styles, Actions etc. folders over to the new folders in Photoshop CS2?

Any insight would be appreciated.

Thanks

[Doug Nelson]

Copying all plugins will be catastrophic (ie: CS2 won't even run). You can reinstall plugins to any folder you want, but you'll have to point CS2 to it via the alternate plugins folder preference. It can be anywhere except under the Photoshop/plugins folder. You can copy all the presets, but there's not much point to it, as many won't work (so don't overwrite any CS2 files).

And CS2 can be installed without uninstalling your older version.

[rnbluvva]

Hi Doug,

Thanks for explaining that to me.

So if I do the upgrade, then will I have to worry about reinstalling everything or will what I have in my Plugins folder in CS be OK?

My only hesitation right now is that I am thinking of purchasing a faster computer. I was wondering if I could just burn a copy my plugins and presets folders to CD and use them.

But now I see that if I do indeed get a new system I will have to just reinstall everything.

As for my patterns, textures, actions etc, can I copy all of those existing things to CS2?

Thanks for being so helpful.