Restoring plugins after preferences reset?

[camner]

Lightroom Version

Lightroom Classic CC version 7.4

Operating System

1. macOS 10.13 High Sierra

To solve a problem I was having with videos displaying incorrectly, the good folks at the Adobe forum suggested I reset LR preferences, which I did and fortunately, that solved my video display problem.

I had expected that my UI preferences would disappear, and I took screenshots of all of the LR and catalog preferences screens before resetting (I also kept a copy of the old prefs file).

What I had NOT expected was that most of my plugins would no longer be loaded. I realized that the ones that did not get preserved were plugins that were in a custom location I had chosen, whereas the ones that DID survive the preferences reset were installed in a location chosen by the plugin installer rather than by me.

Is there a way to avoid having to manually load each of the plugins that didn't survive the prefs reset and manually reentering serial numbers, etc.?

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Not now, but for the future (in case you have to reset your preferences again) you already gave the answer yourself: store your plugins in the default location. I don't see any advantage of storing them elsewhere.

 

[camner]

It was so long ago I can't remember where, but I vaguely recall reading some advice somewhere to store the plugins someplace where one can more easily organize them, if one has a lot of them, which I do. Also, since it probably adds overhead to have plugins, when I've tried one and found it interesting but not of current use, I remove it from LR but keep it in the organized plugin tree (subfolders of plugins) for possible future use. I'm not saying this potential advantage is persuasive; it's just an explanation of why I did what I did. But this would be a time to reconsider that strategy!