Is there a simple way to open only a duplicate file?

[leahbraaten28]

I was wondering if there was an easy way to open a file it be a duplicate. I know that I can open the original file and then duplicate it from there. That's what I normally do. However this current file is pretty large and my laptop REALLY does not like having two large files open in PS simultaneously. If possible I would love to just be able to open one file and it be a duplicate of the original. I feel like once upon a time you could do something like that with "Open as" but I can't remember if that was PS or a different program.

[JJMack]

You do not have to do anything using open as.  All you need to do is open the duplicated file and not the original. If the original is open close it and open the duplicate. Also if you save PSD file with the extension PSDT.  Photoshop will treat it as template.  When you open a PSDT file Photoshop will open a new document with the contents of the PSDT file in the new document.  However the document is new it has no file on disk till you save one in some folder. You have opened a none existing duplicate.

[r-bin]

After opening the file, execute the script.

executeAction(stringIDToTypeID("resetDocumentFormatStr"), undefined, DialogModes.NO);

[Per Berntsen]

Open the original, then immediately do a Save As with a different file name.

Make sure that you have a backup of the original in case you should make a mistake.

[jane-e]

Sometimes I will Cmd+C followed by Cmd+V in Mac Finder (or Windows File Explorer) when I want to be 100% certain I'm not about to overwrite the original, then I open the copy.

~ Jane