P: Auto-Save/Recovery function

I feel Jeffrey .. the performance may impact initially but later phase it can be optimized. Like Robert has tried PSD autosave. Initiall PS4 also was not user friendly and performance also was that good. Still it has come through many version till date.

>> To do that, PS would save a log file with all information needed to recreate the image from its initial state.

That would still require gigabytes of data being written per minute for many users. Photoshop is not a simple parameter/metadata editing system (like Lightroom or video editors). And the parameters that go into each operation are probably more complex than you realize. Only the simplest commands (invert, blur, etc.) are simple enough to journal in the way you propose.

While Auto Save will bog down the application periodically, journaling would have minimal impact. To do that, PS would save a log file with all information needed to recreate the image from its initial state. Photoshop actually has a log feature now, it's just not detailed enough.

It's not necessary to save all the pixels. What's needed is to record in sequence which tool is in use, the operation selected for it, and the value(s) input to the tool. That is a very small amount of data. If PS crashes, the file could be reopened and the journal "replayed" to reconstruct all the user's edits. Ideally, it should be possible to stop replaying before the last few operations (the number selected by the user) in case the crash is repeatable. That would allow the user to save before the bad action and then diagnose the problem further.

I've used Photoshop since version 3.0 and it badly needs to implement journaling. There's just been too many instances where the application has crashed and I've lost work. Yes, I try to save frequently. Because there are so many ways the application could fault including many beyond its control such as video drivers, the best way to help users be productive is to help them recover lost images without needing to remember everything the user did, and to have to sit at the computer all over again repeating the lost work when the application could recover the lost operations automatically.

Microsoft Office and SQL Server have journaling. Given the price of Photoshop, it needs it too. I won't buy another version until it does.

Settable either in two styles: a. every X amount of time ask, "Do you want to save now?" b. When Photoshop is idle for X amount of time and changes have been made. Should be settable in Photoshop Preferences/Settings to turn the feature on and off and the intervals with which it is done. I tend to go into trances and forget if I've saved.

Also crash protection along the same line. Such that it makes a smaller version of the file we can boot off of if Photoshop crashes/freezes (Painter has this as well as many other programs)--which tends to be frequent since I run other programs in conjunction with Photoshop. (AI, for example). I'd like with it, savable history with the crash protection. Sometimes Photoshop crashes when I'm undoing or playing with undos, so then I often have to either start over, which is a pain, or undo manually, which is equally a pain. (Maybe make it also an option with saving the file.)

To add some perspective, there would be tradeoffs with a feature like this: With the way that Photoshop currently works, auto-save essentially would lock a user out from working in Photoshop while the save occurs. (I believe that's what happens with the Electric Iris solution above) This certainly helps remind you to save at regular intervals, and there's value in that. At the same time, if you're working on a 2 gig file saving every 5-10 minutes might get pretty painful. If the save process was a on separate thread/process, you could continue to work, but there could be a performance hit while the save is happening. For these issues - as sighted by Christoph, such a feature would probably have to be user configurable to manage the tradeoffs.

Reported in the u2u forum:

I have developed a PsdAutoSave plugin which is available at
http://www.electriciris.com/psdautosa...

http://forums.adobe.com/message/28755...

»one should not work for hours without saving...«
True.

Anyway the subject has been discussed at some length in the user-to-user Forum and to me the programming effort and performance issues such a feature (basically intended to protect people from their own workflow choices) would incur seem wasteful.

If I'm not mistaken, saving files is a mission of the OS, and those operations can be quite taxing for the processor and storage sub-systems.

When one uses Photoshop, one wants to work at full speed.
Some users disconnect from the network and turn off their anti-virus to work without hurdles. If there was an auto-save, it could hurt users who work on huge files, as it would slow down Photoshop tremendously.

So, if such a system was in place, it would need to be set up by the user, not a default setting. (According to what I read, Apple is working on the saving of the files for Lion, we might need to wait to see what they are up to, then would need to wait for Redmont's (Microsoft) answer.)

If this becomes a feature request, I'd like that function to also have an incremental saving option: it could save your document in V1, V2, etc. giving a way to go back in time to another version (but it seems that it is what Apple is working on, again, so it is worth spending time on something that might happen anyways?)

I would rather troubleshoot your system to see what crashes Photoshop... It is one of the most stable applications out there in a well maintained and properly scaled system.
(see: http://blogs.adobe.com/crawlspace/201... )

When does the crash occur?
What are your machine's specifications?
What other software is running? (especially stuff that work all the time in the background, like Anti-Virus, tuning, or OS modifying software) What Photoshop plug-ins do you use?
Are you running the latest version of Photoshop, and its plug-ins? (see: http://blogs.adobe.com/crawlspace/201... )

And without sounding like an old teacher, one should not work for hours without saving... but we all know that and do not always practice it 😉