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Participant
February 23, 2023
Question

Saved photoshop file multiple times then it crashed and lost all the saves? How is this possible?

  • February 23, 2023
  • 2 replies
  • 2688 views

I have a MacBook Pro and I was working on an art piece for the past 4 days on photoshop. I hit save (control save) multiple times through out the day today to make sure I was saving my work. B4 I called it a day I figured I'd hit save just one more time just to be safe and while it was saving photoshop crashed. But I felt safe since I had just saved minutes before the crash and after every step I did that day. But when I went to go open up my saved file, the icon looked like it did 4 days ago, i though "oh no that doesn't look good" so I opened it up and sure enough it looks exactly as it did 4 days ago and I lost days of saved work. Anyone know why this happened or how to recover what I saved? I have Dropbox online as well. So maybe that has something to do with it? Please help! 

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2 replies

Kevin Stohlmeyer
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 23, 2023

Hi @jason28548010w1kh a couple of suggestions:

1. Confirm Photoshop is listed and checked/active under Apple System Prefs/Security and Privacy/Full Disk Access.

2. If your dropbox is backing up the location you are saving to - either save to another location or disable live syncing while working out of the folder.

Participant
February 23, 2023

So basically my work is lost? 

Kevin Stohlmeyer
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 23, 2023

I would check your Dropbox online account to see if its in an archive/deleted folder.

If you had TimeMachine running you could go back to that as well.

When you went to save - did it error or not complete, prompting you to save again when closing?

D Fosse
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 23, 2023

Where did you save it to? Desktop? Folder on a local drive? Over a network? Cloud?

 

In fifteen years of working professionally with Photoshop, 8 hours a day, I have never, ever, lost a file. What I have done, however, on many occasions, is to accidentally save to an unintended location, simply because I wasn't paying enough attention. I'll probably keep doing that from time to time.

 

When that happens, just initiate a new save to see where it wants to go.

Participant
February 23, 2023

I saved it inside of a folder on my desktop. I did a spotlight search on my computer for the file name and found nothing on my computer except that one file that I was saving it as. 

 

sometimes when I hit command S to save I notice it's not actually saving it. Maybe that's what happened? 

D Fosse
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 23, 2023

Do you have your desktop in iCloud? If you do, and save big files to your desktop, they will actually be saved to cloud, with all the risks and uncertainties that entails. Cloud saving is fine for small files, big files is another story.

 

( https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206985  )