Participating Frequently

Question

No automatic deletion of files after work is finished

Forum|Forum|3 months ago
January 27, 2026
3 replies
138 views

Working in LR -> editing in PS. After finishing processing and saving the work in PS, undeleted files remain in the TEMP space. Only closing PS deletes them. Prolonged work can fill the hard drive. Files should be deleted immediately after closing/saving!

Adobe Photoshop Version: 27.2.0 20251213.r.15 e3408e7 x64 (final, Release)

jamesmite

Participating Frequently

This is normal behavior in Adobe Photoshop when sending files from Adobe Lightroom.

Photoshop keeps TEMP and scratch files for the entire session (undo history, smart objects, crash recovery). They’re only cleared when you fully close Photoshop — not when you save/close a file.

If your drive fills up during long sessions:

Set a separate scratch disk (Preferences → Scratch Disks)
Lower History States
Use Edit → Purge → All (clears undo, frees space)

If temp files remain after closing Photoshop, then it’s a bug.

Jagodzinio.plAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thank you for your substantive approach and advice - set up a second directory for temporary files on another disk, and ultimately replace the SSD with a larger one.

D Fosse

Community Expert

@Jagodzinio.pl

I’ve been watching this for a couple of days and I’m still not seeing any general buildup of scratch files (Photoshop Tempxxxxxxxxxxxx). I see them appear in the system Temp directory when Photoshop opens, and disappear when Photoshop closes. I don’t have any older orphaned scratch files there.

However, Bridge seems to hold on to some of these files if it remains open after you close Photoshop. When you close Bridge they should go away.

If these temp files accumulate, there are two explanations. One, there really is a bug, and like all bugs it only happens under certain circumstances and may hit a limited number of users.

Two, Photoshop - or Bridge! - isn’t closing down properly so that the shutdown sequence is interrupted. That could have any number of explanations, up to and including an application crash when closing, so the first thing I would do is reinstall Photoshop/Bridge and do a complete wipe of preferences in the process. Start fresh.

Not really the answer you’re looking for, but keep a close eye on this and see if you can spot a pattern.

Jagodzinio.plAuthor

Participating Frequently

I wrote from the beginning—I guess you didn't read it carefully—that these are files that are created during work and disappear only after a restart. They're gone after a restart—but why do I need to restart the program every dozen or so graphic projects?

D Fosse

Community Expert

Ah, well...in that case everything is operating normally and as designed.

As I wrote earlier:

“The scratch file is reused and recycled as you work. Requesting and allocating disk space for every new file would slow down Photoshop massively, and make batch processing extremely inefficient.

The scratch file doesn’t build up beyond what’s needed for your biggest files. Then it’s reused.”

Here’s the thing: The scratch file contains all history states for all open documents. Each history state potentially adds the full uncompressed file size. That means the scratch file will quickly grow to orders of magnitude bigger than your nominal starting file sizes. How many history states do you have? How many files do you keep open?

If you’re working with large files, several hundred GB is perfectly normal. I usually say that you should have at least 500 GB free space, but you may well need more.

The way to reduce the scratch size, is to reduce history states. Going from the default 50 states down to, say, 10 or 15, will dramatically reduce the scratch files.

A

Aleke

Community Manager

Hi @Jagodzinio.pl
Photoshop keeps some temporary files around even after you close a document because they’re still connected to your current Photoshop session. Once you fully quit the app, those temp files clear out automatically.
If you have any other questions, feel free to let us know!
Thanks!
Alek

*(If you mention me with an @, like @Aleke, I’ll get a notification and can respond faster.)*

Jagodzinio.plAuthor

Participating Frequently

This is an unnecessary feature that I don't want to use. How can I disable it?

If it is necessary, could you please explain what it's for?

E

ExUSA

Legend

Photoshop uses a scratch disk file and this is opened when launch Photoshop, and is very much needed.

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