Photoshop merged all my files when I Saved As a psd and I don't understand why

Question

I suspect it may have something to do with me messing with the color profile, but I don't know much about those and am just trying to understand what happened. I started off making the document as a cmyk because I heard it was better for print. Then when it came time to color my line art, I noticed that the colors were not matching how they appeared in the hue cube, read that this was normal for cmyk, switched it to rgb to test if the colors would now come out as expected, then switched it back to cmyk. After Saving As a psd file like usual, the next day I did some research and decided it would be best to just copy my line art and start fresh by pasting it into a new sRGB file. But when I went to do that my layer's were all merged into one.

How did this happen, and how could I possibly get a version with my layers back? There was nothing in version history, and I don't have any previous temp files for the whole project on the computer itself either. Which I also dont understand because I save pretty frequently throughout my process just in case.

Edit: I retraced my steps as best as I remember, but the problem did't replicate. I remember there were warning boxes about files merging, but I clicked "do not merge" both times.

D Fosse · Accepted Answer

Changing color mode will flatten the file since the layer structure will have a completely different meaning, or most likely not be applicable at all. Blend modes and numerical adjustments can in most cases not be translated.

Even just converting to a different color space in the same color mode (say, from Adobe RGB to sRGB) will by default flatten, and for the same reason. You will get an option to not flatten - but then the appearance of the file changes, because the numerical adjustments will have a different meaning.

As long as the file is open, you can go back as many history states as you have specified in preferences. Save and Close wipes history and fixes the file permanently in that state. Then you can't go back. Which is why it pays to save incremental versions as you work.

Conrad_C · Answer

I started off making the document as a cmyk because I heard it was better for print.
By @Elliot257333584xie

FYI, “CMYK for print” is not as true as it was 30 years ago. You may not need to convert to CMYK in the first place. The short explanation is that most print workflows today are RGB-based. For the long explanation, read on…

Historically, “print” meant either CMYK process colors, or spot colors. You would be given some reference CMYK values or a CMYK swatch book which your local printing company would also be using, so if you followed those colors you’d get what you expected.

However, in the last few decades printing changed radically. First, printing went international like everything else, with more printing being sent overseas. But presses aren’t tuned to the same standards around the world. That meant the same CMYK values did not produce the same color everywhere. Color management helped solve this, by providing a way to help keep colors consistent. But the main lesson was…

…it was no longer safe to just say “CMYK for print.” Now you had to know which CMYK printing conditions they were, so you could specify the correct values for their local ink set, maybe with the help of the correct CMYK color profile from your printing company.

Then, print workflows emerged that did not need to lock down the CMYK values until the printing plates were made. This had the great advantage of letting the colors be adaptable to any press around the world without having to change your original file. If your printing company told you that they had upgraded/modernized to this workflow, you could be told to work in RGB, not CMYK, and let them do the RGB-to-CMYK conversion in their equipment. So you’d design and edit in RGB.

At the same time, it became possible to make photo-quality prints at home with high quality inkjet printers. Current pro inkjet printers aren’t limited to four CMYK inks, they have more inks to increase color detail and expand the color gamut. The latest Epson and Canon pro-level desktop inkjet photo printers can have 10 inks or more. Obviously, CMYK would be wrong for these printers because they don’t just have 4 inks, they can include Violet or Red or Light Cyan. For those printers the advice, again, is to keep the document in RGB and edit in that; you let the printer driver software do the final conversion to the printer’s ink set which is much more diverse than just CMYK.

Those last few paragraphs explain why today, it’s a lot more likely to be told to work in RGB for both screen and print. But it depends on the job and you should always check. If someone says “CMYK” then ask them which kind, and have them provide the correct CMYK profile if possible.

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