Presets migration is now my favorite feature of PS CS6! I always hated upgrades or new computer setups for this very reason. You can do it manually, of course, but it’s a bit of a pain and not very thorough.
The layer duplicate and mutli-layer coloring is a nice touch as well!
If you’re like me, you set up custom Workspaces in Adobe Photoshop. I like having certain panels located in certain places, some fully open, and some reduced to icon-only state. Saving those panel locations makes it easy to return Photoshop to your preferred setup quickly and easily if you move Panels around during a work session. It also allows you to have different configurations for different tasks, such as one setup for general Photoshop work, and another for color correction.
Recently I did a clean install on my MacPro, and wanted to pull my custom Workspaces from a backup so I wouldn’t have to re-configure them – a time-consuming task. But where does Adobe Photoshop store these custom Workspaces?
They’re found where you would probably most expect them to be:
Users/[your user name]/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop CS5Settings/WorkSpaces
Make a backup copy of this file for easy recovery if you decide to reformat you drive at a later date – it’ll be easier to get up and running again when the time comes.
And if you’re interested in finding where other custom files and preferences are stored, you can visit this knowledge base article on Adobe’s website.
If you’re like me and dread the thought of setting up custom workspaces when you install Adobe Photoshop on a new computer, or reinstall it for whatever reason, there is a simple solution.
I have all my Photoshop panels set up on my 30″ LCD in the perfect spot, and my keyboard shortcuts set up the way I prefer, so starting from scratch is a pain.
Thankfully, John Nack (Adobe Photoshop Product Manager) shared a script that one of the Adobe engineers wrote to export and/or import your customized Workspaces. You can download the Workspaces script here. Details can be found in this post on John Nack’s blog.
If you’re the type who likes to have their InDesign panels in a certain spot all the time, or like to have certain panels open for certain types of projects, you simply must take advantage of Workspaces. Workspaces allows you to save your panel locations for use at any time. To save your Workspace, set your panels up the way you like them, then go to Window>Workspace>Save Workspace… Name your workspace when prompted. That’s it. To test it, move your panels around, close some, open some others. Then go back to Window>Workspace and select the Workspace you just named from the list. Your panels should all snap back to where they were when you saved. You can set up multiple Workspaces. I have one for when I’m working on text heavy documents in which I have most of the text-related panels like text wrap, story, character, styles, etc. open. Then I have another one for “all-around use” which have totally different panel locations. If you work on multiple computers, you can bring your Workspace with you, though it’s not quite as easy as it should be. To bring your Workspace with you, navigate in the Finder to: Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/Adobe InDesign/Version 5/ Workspaces. If you’re still running CS2, the path is the same except substitute Version 4 for Version 5 in the file path. In that folder you’ll see an XML file named after the Workspaces you’ve saved. Simply burn it to CD or email it to your other computer and place it in the same folder on that computer. Workspaces aren’t exclusive to InDesign. All the Adobe Creative Suite 3 applications have them, and work in much the same way. Photoshop goes a few steps further in that it also allows you to save any custom keyboard shortcuts and menu customizations you’ve made in the Workspace as well.
One annoying “feature” we’ve had to endure throughout the years with virtually all the graphics applications we use is the prolific increase of palettes that we are forced to work with daily. If you use Adobe Photoshop, you probably have at least 5 to 6 palettes open at all times. Even a simple ad layout in InDesign might find your screen with 6 to 8 palettes minimum… because lets face it, you never know what you’ll need until you see it in front of you. Even with InDesign’s sliding/docking palettes feature, you may find your screen getting crowded. 
One solution that works well for me is to take advantage of Adobe’s Workspaces feature. Workspaces, available in all of Adobe’s CreativeSuite apps, are a way of displaying only the palettes you want/need for a specific task. You can save different workspaces and access them at any time. For instance, if you’re working on a text-heavy book in Adobe InDesign, you could have all of the text-related palettes open and arranged on screen the way you want and save that workspace. Then when you go to add graphics, you can switch to a different workspace that might include more design-specific palettes. The screenshot above shows only one custom Workspace in Photoshop, but I have several set up for InDesign for specific tasks. Another option, of course, is to learn the keyboard shortcuts!