One Thing Photoshop Seems to be Missing

Autosave or AutoBackup.

I'm horrible about saving, and last night I was working on a BUNCH of stuff in Photoshop, and of course they weren't saved when I bumped my case and my computer restarted.

Hours of PSDs gone, tho I have all of the web graphics created from them, so I guess all is not lost. :/

EVERY other high-end program that I have has autosave or autobackup. Why won't Adobe learn???

 

I totally totally totally agree. Have I mention that I positively 100% agree with you? Agreeing I hear you ask and for what the autosave. 3-4 years ago when I was part of a developing team I used to rant (when i lost my work) which usually consisted of 20 psd related projects all title Untitled X and photoshop crashed resulting in me loosing hours of work.

There's a downside to an autosave feature. Let's say you create some works which you saved and want to go back to it and it auto saves on your works then you've lost all your original works. I'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult though for the autosave feature to allow a direction to a folder of your choice but the same principles could still apply on previous works being overwritten by an autosave feature.

Overall, I agree, there should be an autosave feature of some kind. I cannot count the amount of times I lost work when i transfered works between imageready to photoshop and vice versa only for both to crash out. It's a bad habit of mine not regularly saving work. Normally 9 out of 10 my psds will have untitled in them down to pure laziness.

 

Me, too.

3d Studio Max seems to have the best method. It doesn't save OVER your file, but instead saves your work to an autobak file, and you can choose how many autobaks and at what interval they are saved in.

In other words, autobak01 is saved after five minutes (for example), autobak02 is saved after another five minutes, and autobak03 after another five. Then after another five minutes it overwrites autobak01, etc...so the most work you'll lose is five minutes worth.

The problem is that it only works with your first open file. If you have more than one open, the second and beyond are not autobacked.

 

Yeah that's right. I'm sure with adobes resources they could come up with an efficient auto backup/save feature that would save multiple files. Nowadays, I tend to be a little better at saving my psds at regular intervals as my designs become more complex.

Sometimes I can see why people forget to save as most times I was engrossed in the design/creation and didn't think twice about transferring to image ready and then wham crash "you've just lost all your work" and yes shelley they where all untitled and you forgot to save so you'll never see than again.

I'm still on cs2 but since ps7 I have vented about adobe bringing in some autosave feature and I would have thought they would have implemented one by now but seems they haven't for some reason or another.

I'm not holding out they will add it anytime soon which is unfortunate.


Did you loose a lot chani?

 

No, this time it was mostly easily re-creatable files like the background gradients for my new forum's tcats and theads. No big. I still have the web graphics, and I don't plan on changing them, so all is good.

The version of Max that I was talking about was Version 6 which was from around 2002 or so, so I'm not sure if they've improved it since to save multiple projects.

And you're absolultely right...I get so engrossed in working on my projects that I just simply forget to pause and save every once in a while, especially when I'm about to do something like transferring to ImageReady (tho there is no more ImageReady in CS3). But I do have a couple of hefty plugins that could conceivably cause a crash.

 

Does Photoshop really crash for yall o.O. I haven't had it crash once for me and I stress tested it to. What kind of CPU and RAM y'all got o.O?

 

Photoshop doesn't actually crash for me.

I think it's an issue with my case. Everything runs great for as long as I want until I bump it just right, then my computer restarts.

There must be a short in there somewhere.

 

Pre-built I assume? If so, build your own and it'll fix the problem XD. Couldn't resist, sorry.

 

Nope, I built this one. :p

But the part that has the switches is completely enclosed and I didn't install that part. :p

It's a Cooler Master HAF (High Air Flow) case.

It's a monster.

 

My golden rule with Photoshop.

As soon as I create a document, I go to Save-As and name it and save every 20 or so minutes. Back a year ago, I was designing a site for someone that had over 300 layers. I saved it at regular intervals, the program froze up soon after a save. I would have lost that work which had taken me from 6 AM til 10 PM that day.

 

Maybe I'm a little crazy but what's so hard about hitting Ctrl or Cmd S every once in a while? It's just something you need to get in the habit of doing, I do it in my text editor frequently when I'm working on code.

Whenever I'm working on graphics or anything that I want to keep the source file the same, I simply copy the file to my desktop then open it from there, so I can save all I want without risking the original file.

However I do agree with with all of Adobe's resources they should implement an auto-save feature it would be even more awesome if they had a versioning system where all your saves are saved and you can revert to them at any time.

 

HAF, <3. But I run caseless so XD.

 

I agree. I'm not a designer, but with every type of document I work on - notepad for code, Word, PowerPoint, e-mails in Outlook, etc - I always hit CTRL + S every few minutes. If it's something really important and I get compulsive, I'll save it after every few words or sentence.

Even when I'm typing posts and threads on a forum, I'll copy it into a text editor and save it periodically in case my browser crashes or something goes awry when I submit the post.

 

You're both right...it's really easy to hit CTRL+S, but the problem is getting into the habit of it. Especially if you're really engrossed in the actual creation of your project.

It's easy for two hours to pass before I even know it when I'm totally engaged in my work.

I know it's no excuse, but for a whole lotta people it's the way it is, and it would be much easier if there were an autosave. It's kinda like an insurance policy.

 

You're right that it is tough to get into the habit, but it's a huge life-saver! Put a sticky note on your monitor with prominent coloring: "SAVE YOUR WORK!" (maybe I'm crazy but I leave notes to myself all the time; I live by notes and to-do lists ).

If you ever take a second-long break to breathe, crack your knuckles, stretch, or whatever - that's the perfect time to save as well.