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Elijah5E80
Participant
January 14, 2021
Question

Is it possible to recover an open and unsaved PSD file if autosave was turned off?

  • January 14, 2021
  • 1 reply
  • 174 views

Hey all,

I've been working on a very long term project in Photoshop for months and only saving occasionally because I simply trusted that autosave had my back if anything happened. Well, my macbook crashed for the first time in months, and I go to the open recent files to find nothing recovered from the crash. I check my file handling and somehow auto save was turned off (though I've no memory of doing this). Nothing in the library of autosave files either. It had been nearly two weeks since my last actual command+S save and easily 10-20 hours worth of work. I did, however, do a Time Machine backup a couple days ago. Is there any way to recover from that? Or is there any way to recover that work otherwise? Or am I screwed?

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1 reply

Norman Sanders
Norman Sanders
Legend
January 15, 2021

I did, however, do a Time Machine backup a couple days ago. 

***

If you do have Time Machine running you probably will be able to recover the file when it was existing saved on a previous date or before that date.  

First, choose your Finder and locate the folder that stores that file. Highlight it.

Choose Time Machine and current files in that folder will be displayed. 

On the right are previous dates.

Select one of the previous dates, perhaps a date of a couple of days before now. Click on it and the files in the folder on that date will be displayed….including your lost file. Click on the file. 

Down at the bottom of the file display choose Restore.

The file will appear in your current folder.

Job done.

 

If the missing file does not show up on your chosen date, choose earlier dates. Good luck.

 

One more bit of advice: Save often but NOT with the same file name.  Use this sequence "filename_1", "filename_2" and so on. In that way, if your current file goes south, you have an earlier version of the file available. 

 

 

 

 

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