Photoshop CS5 autosave feature?

[ac361]

Hi. Is there a way to set up Photoshop CS5 to periodically save my work? Thanks.

[sfxjhw2]

"And this is exactly why most PS power-users have, long ago, incorporated systematic Save_As operations into their workflow, when they want them, and not during an intricate Selection process, where if there was an AutoSave, all would be lost."

Really?  Do you have something aside from anadotal evidence to back this up? Actually it's not really that relevant because...

"I feel that too many PS users do not understand, or even know of, Save_As, and Save_As_a_Copy. They should become great friends with each, along with the Ctrl+S (Save)."

Maybe.  But it would also be nice if there was an OPTION for those of us who have not habituated yet.  Remember we are talking about habit here, and when the entire computng industry relies on autosave, it's diffitcult to say, "why don't you just save periodically', because "NO OTHER PROGRAM MAKES ME DO THAT SO I FORGOT!"

"In almost 2 decades, and working with some monster images, I have never lost more than about 30 mins. work. I always have my Save_As to go back to."

Oh, well since you haven't had any trouble then I guess that must hold true to the rest of the world.   (In the meantime I've been using PS heavily for 5 years and have lost at least half-a-week's work if you sum it up).

"If such was introduced, I would demand that it have a toggle, and that there was some sort of a flag, visible in the GUI, when it was on. I can just imagine all the folk complaining that they just lost a 2 hour Selection, when AutoSave kicked in. "

Exactly! That's how you please those who care about the Selection and those who dont, those who have an unstable computer and those you dont, those who can't remember to save and those who dont--you give them the *OPTION*.  Otherwise the sentiment is, "well I don't see why we need that feature, if people would just work the way *I* do."  This is the most narrowminded sentment in computing and if we all stuck to it we would all be using the console or running windows XP ad infinitum.

[the_wine_snob]

Really?  Do you have something aside from anadotal evidence to back this up? Actually it's not really that relevant because...

As a matter of fact, I do. I have been using PS commercially, from almost the first day that version 2.5 hit for the PC. Instantly, I developed just such a workflow. This was even back in the days, when a single 1GB HDD was as big as one could go, and my triple-truck ads pretty well filled it up. I would do a Save_As to DLT, so that I could continue working, with a fairly recent backup. The DLT took some time, so I always had coffee in the studio, to kill those few minutes. As stated above, I have never lost more than about 30 mins. work.

If you look over this thread, and several very similar ones, you will see how those, who make their living with, and know PS, do it. The workflow will be similar for each, if not the exact same. I do not recall any PS power-user having an issue, so it's not just me.

If you have issues, then I would suggest that you look into a modification of your workflow, just like many of us have done.

Continue to file your Feature Requests, and maybe one day you will get what you want. I will just turn it OFF, and continue with what has always worked for me.

Good luck,

Hunt

[sfxjhw2]

"As a matter of fact, I do. I have been using PS commercially, from almost the first day that version 2.5 hit for the PC. Instantly, I developed just such a workflow. This was even back in the days, when a single 1GB HDD was as big as one could go, and my triple-truck ads pretty well filled it up. I would do a Save_As to DLT, so that I could continue working, with a fairly recent backup. The DLT took some time, so I always had coffee in the studio, to kill those few minutes. As stated above, I have never lost more than about 30 mins. work."

Umm.  I think this is the definition of anecdotal. And as stated above I have lost DAYS of work because of the lack of an Autosave. 

"If you look over this thread, and several very similar ones, you will see how those, who make their living with, and know PS, do it. The workflow will be similar for each, if not the exact same. I do not recall any PS power-user having an issue, so it's not just me."

Again, this is very provincial thinking.  PS is not all power users, there is a LARGE userbase of people who would lose their work if, say, the power went out.  I challenge Adobe to get past this constrained design philosophy that is borne out of a pure 'just-work-like-me' ideology so stringent that you would even deprive the users of an **OPTION** otherwise.

"If you have issues, then I would suggest that you look into a modification of your workflow, just like many of us have done."

Thank you for your suggestion, I will do that.  But in the meantime, it would be nice for the other XX% of us out there that Adobe actually consider (*GASP*) an OPTION to protect us who use photoshop in a different way or at a different frequency than the 'power-users'.

"Continue to file your Feature Requests, and maybe one day you will get what you want. I will just turn it OFF, and continue with what has always worked for me."

Ummm, yes, I think that's how an OPTION works. Actually in deference to the 'power-users' I would be fine if autosave was off by default, then you 'power-users' won't have to do anything different *whatsoever* and that makes any recalcitrance completely absurd since denying an option that would be helpful for a large percentage of the userbase when the 'power-users' dont have to do *anything* different smacks of PURE ideology.  

"Good luck,"

you too!

jack

[Noel Carboni]

Keep in mind, up-thread I've made my request known.  Go back to page one and read it.

However, that said, Photoshop is now on version 12.1.  As far as I can tell, none of the conditions you've noted have changed:  It's been possible to lose a lot of work for a very long time.

At this point I wouldn't suggest holding your breath for an autosave feature.  If it ain't in there by now, after 12 major releases and several minor, I'm guessing it's not going in any time soon.

Given that, what Bill has said in good faith is very valid - the tool simply has limitations; it's up to us to learn to work effectively within them.

-Noel

[sfxjhw2]

"However, that said, Photoshop is now on version 12.1.  As far as I can tell, none of the conditions you've noted have changed:  It's been possible to lose a lot of work for a very long time."

Yes this is unfortunate.

"At this point I wouldn't suggest holding your breath for an autosave feature.  If it ain't in there by now, after 12 major releases and several minor, I'm guessing it's not going in any time soon."

That is also unfortunate.

"Given that, what Bill has said in good faith is very valid - the tool simply has limitations; it's up to us to learn to work effectively within them."

That's too bad too, and understandable.  But I'm glad you agree that this is a 'limitation' of PS.  It's too bad.  If the devs didn't have that dev mindset (i.e. I'm a dev and I know what is best for everyone), then PS might actually work better for a larger number of people.  Too bad.

[Xylinx]

I totally agree with Jack here.  I do understand the use of workflows but come on! Some PS users use PS to "quick" edit a file because they are more familiar with say the pen tool then in other apps.  Should I have to build a workflow for that?

Example:

I need to cut out a photo and paste it into powerpoint.  This photo requires some detail on the cut to show in ther graphic.   This could be a 45 minute cutout.  I start the cutout @ 11:00am and get pulled away due to an emergency.  I come back @ 11:35am and the power went out @ 11:32am.  I have lost that work and a 30 minute autosave would have saved my work.

PS is not cheap in fact its quite expensive and takes me an act of congress to get approval for an upgrade every time.  I understand that this is quite complex but so is AutoCAD.  Also, I get the "Moon Rock" thing but thats where NASA came into play.  With the money spent for this product there should be more development into this feature.  Just because PS is preferred it is not the only one.  I see a lot of pundits here and it is quite discouraging.

This seems to be as painful as asking for flash on my ipad \\\///

[the_wine_snob]

If you are so dissatisfied with my comments, then perhaps you can do a poll of PS users, tabulate your results and decide what to use to make your point.

Good luck, and I look forward to your poll.

Hunt

BTW - have you filed your Feature Request yet?

[Xylinx]

I too will file a Feature Request but I am afraid that it will not make a bit of difference but it sure has on my options in the future.

Have you ever talked to PS tech support??

You get India that has phone problems and if you get to stay on the phone that long you'll find out that you have to pay 39.00 for support - the same price as Acrobat Reader (free).  Once you get past this then you get to try and explain your problem and if you're lucky they will put you on hold for 15 minutes and come back and tell you something you've already tried or that they cannot help you.

My point is if I have to go through this kind of pain then maybe I should find other products that can do the same thing but honor their product better than Adobe.  Adobe should really pay more attention to their customers and provide better customer support.  HP and Dell are providing better support and I thought they were the worst out there.

You know I wouldnt have ran into the problem of autosave if PS didnt get a memory error and hangs when doing a "Save for Web & Devices..." on large files it gives me a out of memory prompt hangs which to me is a bug.  However, I am sure that there will be 20 of you pundits that will tell me I am not doing it right...

Given these recent experiences, I will take my interests elseware, I have wasted my time, and even though I am only one person perhaps I am not the only one.

[sfxjhw2]

"If you are so dissatisfied with my comments, then perhaps you can do a poll of PS users, tabulate your results and decide what to use to make your point.

Good luck, and I look forward to your poll."

HAHA.  It would be nice wouldn't it?  But 1) I don't think it would be scientific and 2) I just don't have the time.  I think I'm happy were things are at

You with your purely anecdotal evidence

and

Me with my obvious claim that a large percentage of users are not 'power-users'

[Guest]

I have been enjoying the latest lively discussion...and that is the point I think.  Maybe if this thread gets long enough it can effect change.  With that said and my earlier post here, I have adopted an avid (no pun to Premiere) Save As strategy because I had to.  I recently did a restoration of a family Tin Type in really bad shape.  I worked at <5px for several days...besides going pixel blind and having to walk away every hour or so, I realized my file size was quite large and started saving copies for backups as well as direction changes if I needed to, and I did, twice.  I ended up with 15 copies in various states (pushing a Gig).  The point is I could Not allow any possibility of having to go through all or any part of that process again.

Additionally, I recently did some research on PNG/PNG-A file architecture and had a pretty big Ah Ha about what Chris had said before about Gigs of data in a save.  If you take 24bit color and add 24 bits of alpha to that and confined to a shape...whoa, but the key is the compression algorithm and it's pretty magical.  The issue as I see it is the current architecture of PS based on 12+ revs, And the high probability that no one can think of a clean way to do what we are asking.  I have no idea if PS has had a full rewrite in those 12+ revs, or not?  I do know that I have worked with PLC code that was started poorly went through 10-12 revs until it became unbearable (Spagetti Code) to add or change things, so it had to be rewritten from scratch with all the newest Code and strategies.  It was never pretty.

We have come a long way since Turtle...if any of you remember, and Autodesk broke the ground and the mold on Vector based graphics with ~100k man hours on code.  PS is now a pretty phoenominal hybrid using vector & Bit map with lots of toys and tools, albeit not intuitive to me anyway, to be able to produce some amazing results.  I have only used it since V7 and still don't consider myself proficient, but my work flow ethics stem from engineering for 25+ years and being able to write Lisp back in the day to help my work flow...And doing what I Had To, to get the job done.  Hopefully some bright mind at Adobe will get an Ah Ha and figure out a clean way to have an AutoSave feature...but it may take a while....effecting Change is not always easy.

PJH

[Semaphoric]

I would not consider myself a "power user", but I had no difficulty getting into the "save early, save often" habit. One of my favorite features of Pshop is "Revert", which doesn't really work if you haven't saved . But seriously, I can't recall ever losing work due to Pshop crashing. I can only recall Pshop quitting itself once or twice, years ago.

If there were Autosave, I would be sure to disable it.

[Guest]

As others have stated: I too have never ever missed an autosave feature in more than a decade of PS usage.

It would be maddening to have PS to suddenly save your file in a state which you don't want.( making selections, flattening layers, etc...)

I for sure would disable autosave and stick to save/ save as etc... It takes tenths of a second to click "save as" If you lose files by not saving and not having multiple copies, it's your own fault imho.

[Noel Carboni]

Hobotor wrote:

It would be maddening to have PS to suddenly save your file in a state which you don't want.( making selections, flattening layers, etc...)

You folks are thinking too small!  It's not rocket science to realize you wouldn't want it autosaving over your master document!

The problem to be solved is this:  People lose information because of unexpected crashes or power outages or whatever.  Just because YOU and I haven't done so because we've developed good CYA habits doesn't mean everyone has, and like it or not your having to remember to save occasionally DOES take away some of your concentration.

What if, when you restarted Photoshop after everything was brought back up, it presented you with a dialog that said something like "Auto-recovery has found copies of the last documents you were editing.  Would you like to continue editing them?"  This is not dissimilar to what Microsoft Word does.

The process, of course, would need to be:

• Unobtrusive when saving.  Maybe a slight slowdown could be tolerated, but no interruption to work.  The save would have to be done in the background.
• Automatic.  When starting up Photoshop it should prompt you to recover - or not - any work it found that was potentially lost.
• Robust.  It should just work every time, not fail to recover lost work at the worst possible time.  Answering the auto recover dialog without thinking (i.e., blindly just pressing [ OK ] as people are apt to do) shouldn't result in the loss of recovery capability.
• Use all the system's capabilities.  It should be possible, for example, to find previous saved copies in the Recycle Bin.

This is all an academic exercise for me, as I actually DO save my documents as a matter of habit, and my workstation is on UPS and very stable, and I don't lose work.  But I do think such a feature would have merit, with little to no downside, even for folks who have already developed good work habits.

-Noel

[Guest]

Once again Noel has stated eligantly, the simple truth of the situation and offered another good possibility to remedy the situation.  Those on this thread that are experienced power users have obviously have strong, well developed work habits, probably based on past bad experiences.  My first big loss (in the mid 80's) was from the local power company inspecting their meter and found it loose, jiggled it not once but twice and took down 8 systems worth of work...all of us lost at least an hour worth of work...8+hrs of Lost Opportunity!  From that point on I started saving every 10-15 minutes.  My loss back in June (this thread) was my bad because I had moved that UPS to another system temporarily...still I came Here to find solutions and let Adobe know my thoughts on having a AutoSave feature available after 12+ Revs.

Noel's & My point here is that Stuff Happens regardless of whether it is an Adobe problem or not.  All OS systems are relatively unstable and you never know if the latest patch will kill something you use or not...same with Adobe.  Then there is Malware, Viruses, Trojans, etc., Hardware, Software conflicts, and lots of other possibilities for crashing.  Novice or new users are the most vulnerable to any of the myriad of possibilities.  PS is the flagship and pretty much defacto standard in this arena and I am sure represents significant revenue streams for Adobe.  IF a novice or new user forks out the buck$ for it, they should have some modicum of basic security in their considerable learning curve, where they are less likely to be paying attention to Save AS.  I just want it because Sometimes I do get tunnel vision on a project and go beyond my 15min. protocol, and Push the envelope of Safe Workflow Practices...And IT IS MY Choice To Use It OR NOT!  We Deserve that Choice!

PJH

[Chris Cox]

And Noel is starting to understand how difficult it is to implement such a feature correctly...

[Noel Carboni]

Oh, I understand completely.  But this is why you get the big bucks!  I don't ask for too many features, but I believe this is one where you should think about spending some serious effort.  Photoshop's file operations are simply a bit outdated.

Here's a rallying cry for you:  "The difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes just a little longer..." 

-Noel

[sfxjhw2]

So why can't you just perform some sort of automatic 'save as' operation in the background, while leaving everything else the same?

[Noel Carboni]

You willing to stop all work and wait 30 seconds while your autosave of your big multi-layer document completes?

It would at least have to be put into its own thread.

But even that could invoke problems...  For example, suppose it takes most of the RAM in your computer to hold the autosave snapshot while it's saving.  Should Photoshop's subsequent interactive operation be starved for RAM while it continues?

Or what about if the autosave is being done to the same drive as your swap file is on...  Now things that were already slow because you were swapping get even slower.

How does Photoshop handle drive full problems during autosave?

And we can't forget that Photoshop has some parts that are absolutely ANCIENT, and it has had stuff added to it for decades.  It might be a bit messier under the covers than we'd like to believe.

All this stuff has to be considered if an autosave feature is to be properly coded.  Not that it can't be done, but it's pretty clear to do it right would be well beyond what's implied by a "why can't you just perform some sort of..." comment.

It actually seems to me that it would be best integrated into the swap file.  All Photoshop does now with remnant swap files (e.g., Photoshop Temp322472996988) is (sometimes) delete them if it finds them laying around.  Processes for writing to that file efficiently are already in place.

-Noel

[sfxjhw2]

"You willing to stop all work and wait 30 seconds while your autosave of your big multi-layer document completes?"

No but I would easily wait 5 min every 3 hours.

"But even that could invoke problems...  For example, suppose it takes most of the RAM in your computer to hold the autosave snapshot while it's saving.  Should Photoshop's subsequent interactive operation be starved for RAM while it continues?

I want it to do whatever 'save as' does, every 3 hours.

"Or what about if the autosave is being done to the same drive as your swap file is on...  Now things that were already slow because you were swapping get even slower."

I (and I dont think Im alone here) couldn't care less about the speed.  It can take 5 minutes as far as I'm concerned, as long as I have a backup.  That's how unbelieveably imporant a backup is.

"All this stuff has to be considered if an autosave feature is to be properly coded.  Not that it can't be done, but it's pretty clear to do it right would be well beyond what's implied by a "why can't you just perform some sort of..." comment. "

Maybe.  Or it could be that the devs are reaching too far.  They want an autosave that will work for *everyone*, when it probably should only work for those who really need it (the non-power user, unstable-computer-type people).  If you lower the goal post slightly it helps out those of us who need it, and since we already discovered the power-users could care less it doesnt make much of a difference.  Again:  Time: don't care.  Ram: don't care.  Swap file: dont' care.  Speed: don't care.  I want something I can set every 3 hours that will take 5 min to save.  Which is actually laughable when you consider the time it takes for us non-power users to run a Save As opperation.  And for those of us who have lost days worth of work, I really don't think I"m alone here.

[Noel Carboni]

Until such a feature is available, I wonder if could write a quick app that would watch to see if you have Photoshop running and pop up a window reminding you to save every so often...  Hmm....

-Noel

[sfxjhw2]

Noel it's funny you mention that.

Photoshop's free competitor GIMP has had a simlar problem with recalcitrant devs/architechictual concerns/ROI issues (can that even happen with a free product? )/or whatever the reason (though seems more like no one willing to take up the cause).

The history can be found here:

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=138373

And the eventual workaround since no one seemed to attempt to build it into core, was that several users developed a user-level script to implement a solution.  Here's one as an example:

http://registry.gimp.org/node/20875

I'm not sure photoshop has this functionality, but you certainly have my full support if you do.  In fact, I would be willing to donate significantly to development of such a script.

[Guest]

I get it too Chris...with my latest PNGiffany and last time you explained briefly about Gigs of Data.  The most difficult issue as I see it is the Transparency to continued work.  Maybe it would be possible to use a dual caching system that incrementally backs up one of them based on resource usage?  Kind of a hybrid mirroring system for a particular file.  The most difficult would be if you had multiple files open as we often do in our work flow and not have sufficient HD space for a dual cache.  I still think the compression algorithm is a big part of the key.

PJH

[Semaphoric]

What is so hard about pressing Ctrl+S periodically? Sheez!

[sfxjhw2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgetting

[bkmvl]

One thing that would be nice is a feature that i like in Corel Painter and that is the Iterative save(CTRL-ALT-S) for saving the filename with 001,002 and so on,in the event of a crash
you might at least not lose all your work, but of course won't help if you forget to save