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jonathan+7007
Inspiring
August 6, 2025
Answered

Allow my Mac to edit WinPC Photoshop files picked up in Finder from a mounted drive (on a NAS.)

  • August 6, 2025
  • 3 replies
  • 322 views

I have searched for the exact state of interoperability of .PSD files that were created and then saved to a shared drive space on my NAS (on local netork.) I have an M3 (2024) Mac on current Sequoia. NTFS ->MacOS format issue, right? Have to be able both read *and* write to these Photoshop files.

 

Most of my editing will be on a Windows 11 Pro tower across the office, but from time to time will want to work elsewhere.  I use the Adobe Photography plan and the Mac is the second computer on the license. I created a mapped drive for the two windows machines and a the mounted drive in Finder. (I believe I have some Permissions settings to fix because the mounted drive in Finder does not display the mapped drive's files, but that's not my most important question today.)

 

"NTFS for Mac" Paramount -> I have other Paramount software products, so will buy a license to their file format tranlation product if that is the route that other cross-platform editing users follow.

 

Thanks in advance,

jonathan7007

 

 

I

Correct answer Kevin Stohlmeyer

@jonathan+7007 directly accessing from a networked drive via Photoshop Mac OS is risky at best. You can obviously use the drive for storage with proper formatting as mentioned, but officially Adobe states you should drag to local HD, edit, save, then drag back to the networked storage solution. That will minimize any issues caused with direct saving to a network share. 

 

The two largest issues causing corruption I've seen/experienced with our 100+ design team when saving to network drive via Mac OS is:

1. Save speed is faster than the write speed over the network/server speed. 

2. Mac OS is aggressive with read/write permissions and does not release an asset after writing - forcing users to disconnect/restart Mac/force quit Finder to release the connection back to the Mac OS Finder process. 

3 replies

M
M-H
Inspiring
August 7, 2025

PSD files were designed to be cross-platform so operating system doesnt matter as long as you've got access to the files and thats where I'd be looking for issues. It pretty much has to work on txt files. NTFS thing would only apply if it wasnt NAS but just an external HDD which you wanted to use between systems.

My company has switched from NAS on local network to cloud storage with LucidLink a while ago and that works a treat for cross-platform file management as it just mounts storage as local drives, but it aint cheap. As far as i remember when we used to work with NAS it was working pretty smooth when mounting same shared server paths on both windows and mac (via smb) and as soon file was finished saving anyone could open it regardless of the system, it was IT guys setting it up tho.

J
jonathan+7007Author
Inspiring
August 7, 2025

M-H, thank you. At my (individual worker) scale that earlier scenario is what I envisioned for my convenience. That it woked for you is good to know. You seem to have id'd what confused me: the file format was about opening directly on a foreign platform. My Synology NAS (as the source) has cured the "open this file" part as long as the file info is made to be fully functional on both platforms.

 

I was already saving from one PC to another over the network but just ad-hoc saving into one Synology share, At the other PC workstaion I'd have to navigate to that folder on the NAS which was just one of many in one big bucket.

 

Then I decided to try a Mac laptop instead of buying a PC laptop. So I thought it introduced more hassles than it appears to be the case. (I had read about opening into "read-only" status.

 

Again, thank you,

Jonathan7007

Kevin Stohlmeyer
Community Expert
Kevin StohlmeyerCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
August 6, 2025

@jonathan+7007 directly accessing from a networked drive via Photoshop Mac OS is risky at best. You can obviously use the drive for storage with proper formatting as mentioned, but officially Adobe states you should drag to local HD, edit, save, then drag back to the networked storage solution. That will minimize any issues caused with direct saving to a network share. 

 

The two largest issues causing corruption I've seen/experienced with our 100+ design team when saving to network drive via Mac OS is:

1. Save speed is faster than the write speed over the network/server speed. 

2. Mac OS is aggressive with read/write permissions and does not release an asset after writing - forcing users to disconnect/restart Mac/force quit Finder to release the connection back to the Mac OS Finder process. 

    J
    jonathan+7007Author
    Inspiring
    August 7, 2025

    Kevin - Excellent and useful details. Thank you !

    If I understand what your and your group established, I will:

    1. Download from my mounted drive (SMB share on the NAS shared by all three machines) the .psd - using Finder - into my Mac laptop drive so it is fully resident in a different [local]folder.

    2. Fire up Photoshop, open file on Mac.

    3. Edit. 

    4. Save all editing .psd changes/versions to that local folder or - for progect management clarity - another folder named "WIP-[project][date]"

    5. When it's time to round-trip to the Win 11 Pro tower machine , use Finder to copy it to the "mounted drive" in Finder that is the Mapped drive on the Windows machines. The actual location is on the Synology box on the local network.

    6. Perform "housekeeping duties" to keep  WIP folders from taking up too much space on the laptopm (Easy to do.). 

      Kevin Stohlmeyer
      Community Expert
      Kevin StohlmeyerCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      August 7, 2025

      @jonathan+7007 you got it!

       

      E
      ExUSA
      Legend
      August 6, 2025

      A NAS will have file sharing software running, so the drive format is unimportant. The NAS will show up as an SMB share, just like if you had Windows Server and connected with a Mac.

      J
      jonathan+7007Author
      Inspiring
      August 7, 2025

      Thanks, though not the issue I am investigating. Are you opening Photoshop files on a Mac that were created on Windows (Win 11 Pro) to do further editing, saving them back into the network share, and opening them again on the Win 11 edit station? This is the workflow I'm asking about because I was suroised (poor research on my part) that Mac file formatexpectations do NOT allow writing to NFTS files that have been opened from Windows.

      E
      ExUSA
      Legend
      August 7, 2025

      What you wrote makes no sense. There is no such thing as "NTFS files." NTFS is a disk format and irrelevant in this case.

      However, Adobe does NOT recommend opening files directly on ánetwork share. You should copy them to your local drive then back when finished.

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