Skip to main content
Participant
October 15, 2025
Question

Need help with issue opening potential corrupted cloud file in photoshop

  • October 15, 2025
  • 3 replies
  • 162 views

I ran into an issue a week or two ago that I think was triggered by a storage problem.

 

While I was screen sharing with a client and showing a Photoshop document, an error popped up, something about disk space or storage. Since I was mid-session, I closed the message quickly without reading it properly.

 

Later that day, I had Photoshop, Premiere, and After Effects all open at once, hopping back and forth. I noticed my storage was almost full, so I started cleaning up space on my PC while those apps were still running, which in hindsight was probably a bad idea and probably caused this issue. During that cleanup, some temporary files were deleted (which I suspect contributed to the problem), and shortly after that, my PC blue-screened.

 

After restarting my PC, I realized I could no longer open the Photoshop cloud document that had been open during the crash.

 

Now when I try to open it in Photoshop desktop, I get this error:

“Couldn’t open filename.psdc because the file is not compatible with this version of Photoshop.”

 

If I try opening it in the web version of Photoshop, it starts loading but then fails with an error.

 

If I try to download the file (from either the Creative Cloud desktop app or the web interface), the download fails before it starts. I can still make copies of the file from the cloud, but none of those copies open either. I checked the Deleted folder on the web, but there’s nothing there.

 

It’s only this one cloud document that I can’t open, all my other cloud files seem to work fine. Since this was the one open at the time of the crash, I’m guessing something got corrupted in its sync or whatever.

 

I assumed cloud documents keep version history, but since I can’t open this one at all, I’m not sure how (or if) I can recover an earlier version.

 

Any ideas or recovery tips would be hugely appreciated!

3 replies

Participant
October 24, 2025

Regarding your Photoshop, Premiere, and After Effects issue, it's possible that the storage problem and subsequent cleanup contributed to the error.

D Fosse
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 23, 2025

What isn't mentioned very often in all the cloud buzz everywhere, is that cloud storage generally (not only CC) is a lot more prone to file corruption than working off local disk. In practice, this is kind of compensated with the "versioning" that is offered everywhere - meaning that you can retrieve earlier versions of the file. This is part of the cloud storage service itself, not something you need to enable or turn on.

 

Not doing cloud myself so I don't know where to look.

creative explorer
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 20, 2025

@onetwothree456789 you should be able to recover a previous working version. Since you can't open the document to access the history from inside Photoshop, your best bet is to use the Adobe web interface. Head to your files online, navigate to the stuck document — Granted, like you said,  'since this was the one open at the time of the crash, I’m guessing something got corrupted in its sync or whatever.' — it likely isn't saved or corrupted! — but who knows if had a workflow that incoroprated version control. 

 

m
Participant
October 23, 2025

Hey @creative explorer, thanks for the response!

 

Yeh I've tried opening it from tthe Creative Cloud desktop app and the web interface but all fail to open or download.

 

I'm not quite sure what you mean with "workflow that incoroprated version control" as I've never turned any defaults settings like that off. When I open all my other cloud files I can see the different versions saved, but again that option is only an option once the file is opened.

 

If there was a way to get access to the versions saved I suppose there would be a chance that those remain uncorrupted, but I guess I'm all out of luck.

creative explorer
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 24, 2025

@onetwothree456789 if you can incorporate a version control...when yous ave a filename_vers1; save again filename_vers2; save again filename_vers3; Create you own vesion control... Sometimes when I am working on time-sensitive work, I do make sure I am saving my version controls just in case something harsh happens. There might be autosave, but if it crashes at any time, even during a save, it can be corrupted. Hence the manual version controls of save again filename_vers1

m