Styles and Actions Problem
 

Why is it that from time to time, all my styles that I've loaded, disappear and I have to re-load them? I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. I'm on a MacBook Pro but it did this same thing on my pc.

Anna,
Each time you restart Photoshop, the loaded styles, etc. revert to the set of defaults (all the things that are in the "Presets" folder in the main Photoshop folder. If you've loaded various brushes or styles that reside in a different place (my extras are in a folder called "Dona's presets") then those are not reloaded upon starting up PS. It's that way for a good reason--you don't want PS to have to reload every brush, style, pattern, action, etc. you ever downloaded, you just want the standard set to work with, which makes PS startup and run faster.

Now, if you want to have a special set of styles, for example, that you have developed for yourself to load each time (let's call it Anna's styles), then save that set of styles by that name, in the "Presets" folder. What you need to do is go to the "Edit" menu and choose "Preset Manager" then select and delete (they're not going away forever) all the styles you don't want in "Anna's styles", leaving only the special ones you want to include in that bunch. Then select all the remaining styles and click on "Save Set" and name it "Anna's styles". Be sure to navigate to the "Presets" folder as the place to save it. Now that set will always come up (along with the other residents of the "Presets" folder when you restart Photoshop.

Use the same technique to save a set of brushes, patterns, etc. All the other things you've downloaded are still available for temporary use whenever you wish to load them into PS for a particular project.

My styles and actions revert to the defaults only if my Photoshop app gets shutdown ungracefully ... like when I have a power outage. I had to stop the automatic Windows updates, because I have a habit of leaving PS open when I'm working on a project and I was getting frustrated with my workspace getting reset when my PC was automatically rebooted.

You all are great!! Thanks for the info. I'm going to have to play with this one!

I think Dona and Lisa have covered this exactly. For my styles, I loaded all my favourite ones and then called them Dar's Designer styles. They load automatically when I start Photoshop. However, if Photoshop crashes or I have to force quit, it reloads the defaults at start-up. It does take longer for Photoshop to start up however using this method, but I usually go get a cup of tea while Photoshop is starting then I'm ready to go when I get back! This works for brushes, actions, custom shapes and styles.