What is a Zip file? How do I access the files I downloaded?

Opening Downloaded Zip Files

Please open and check your files immediately upon receipt of you download links. Support will be provided within 30 days of purchase if you do not find the answers you need in this help section. Also be sure to back up the files you have purchased. We cannot send replacement files.

Some of the files you download from this site may be packaged as zip files and will have a ‘.zip’ file extension. A zip file is way to bundle multiple files and folders into a single compressed “archive” file for faster and easier file transfer. These files need to be extracted, or “unzipped,” before the contents can be used. Photoshop will not recognize the preset files you download until you copy them out of the zip file.

Opening Zip Files on a Computer

Most modern computers have zip extraction built right into the operating system so you need only double click on the file to gain access to the contents. From there you can copy the zip file contents to a new location. On Windows, you can also right click on the zip file and choose either “Extract Here” or “Extract To…”. “Extract Here” will put the files in the current folder, while “Extract To…” will let you choose the folder. On Mac OS X, you simply double-click the zip file and it creates a folder with all of the files inside.

Once extracted, you can install the presets into Photoshop, or open the image files in the program of your choice. See: How to install Photoshop presets

If you’d like to try a free, open-source file archiver, we use and recommended 7-Zip. This is a Windows program, but the download page offers unofficial versions for Mac, Linux, and other systems.