Photoshop file disappeared after being saved

[mylinht1019]

I've been working on a project for several days and I saved it each time before leaving my laptop, but today when I went on the file was nowhere to be found. On the other day's when I would open Photoshop the file would be in the "recent files" tab and I could continue where I left off. I've tried searching under all my files on my MacBook but I still cannot find it.

[Fredorigin]

Thanks, I just read the troubleshooting page you sent. The odd thing is that there are a lot of businesses like mine who work off a NAS and then make regular backups from that NAS daily (or several times daily) because our artwork is too valuable to be lost in a computer that has decided to die or crash on a particular day. I guess my continuouse backups after completing a project is the only solution for now. As I said before it has something to do with saving a file onto NAS and then opening it on another workstation. Thanks again & I hope that Adobe looks into this. 

[Fredorigin]

Just a thought. Maybe since Western digital has the most popular NAS ( I use WD My Cloud Pro Series 40TB PR4100 4-Bay NAS Server (4 x 10TB). Maybe these two thousand pound Gorillas (I ssay that affectinately) can get together. It's true that there are many different NAS drives and servers, but starting with the most popular one used by art studios is a god start. Any game plan is better then none. (:

[D Fosse]

There is still a very simple answer: save locally, then move. That's all you need to do, and that's what we all do.

In my job, I have a mirrored server setup to give everyone in the organization access to my finished files. But they first get saved to a couple of local 10TB disks. That's my primary archive, with backup.

We have a crew of IT guys who look after the server. But I never save anything directly to it, always copy. I have never lost a single file in my entire 20 year career here.

You can get away with saving over network for small word and excel files of perhaps 20kB. A Photoshop file is a different matter. If a "corruption event" happens on average every x megabytes, the bigger the file is, the higher the risk that any one single file will be hit. It's just numbers.

[Fredorigin]

Another thing to note (in my case) is that this does not happen when saving a design. It happens only when opening a design. The proof of the pudding is that when I make a backup from my NAS, the file is on my backup even when it dissapears from my NAS. 

[Fredorigin]

FYI: I've been working with Photoshop since version 1.0. I've been working with a NAS drive (same configuration - raid 5) for the past 12 years. This problem has been occuring (with me) for the past year.

This happens on tiny files and large files equally.  

[sciblu]

I just had this happen and I'm freaking out. Thankfully I was able to open recent files (I didn't realize until I had edited a few photos) and save a copy to the correct location but I still have no idea where my original edited files. I searched in finder and the files are not there. I also searched my cloud account since photoshop has been suggesting I save there. I have since opened a few different photos and they appear to save correctly so hopefully this is just a fluke... 

[jane-e]

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@sciblu wrote:

I just had this happen and I'm freaking out. 

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Can I ask where the image was located when you opened it? Was it in the Photos app? Did you open it from an email or message? Did you open it from Finder or Bridge? Was it on a server? Or something else? 

Jane

[D Fosse]

The problem here, Jane, as you know, is that the Photoshop home screen gives no indication where the file actually is, and just gives people the impression that it's "in" Photoshop. And if for a myriad of reasons the file drops off the home screen, they think the file is "gone" or "disappeared". Unless they know where they actually saved it.

I think the home screen is responsible for nothing but bad habits, misunderstandings and general dumbing down the whole procedure. I think Adobe would do users a great service by just removing it. Just had to get that off my chest... 🙂

[Alex Fritz]

Same issue... 2 hours of work down the drain. I saved the project multiple times. Photoshop just crashed due to a missing file... the very file that was open. I quickly tried to save but the program just closed. The file had vanished from my system. beyond frustrated. 

[svree]

Agree! I touched up a major file of mine a few days ago. Now it's completely gone!

[berniew42487286]

Photoshop upgraded today. I was in the process of saving a documents to a newly created folder where a half a days work was saved and out of nowhere the folder vanished without a trace. I had the master folder open when this happened, the subfolder just dissapeared. #*$@!

[ericar13]

I just had this happen to me. I'm on a Mac, I had a saved file in Photoshop and opened it this morning to do an additional change, then closed and saved it and as it was an edit from Lightroom, it updated the file in Lightroom and I saved a social sized jpg. I know exactly what the file was named and where it was located. I went back into Lightroom a few hours later to save a full res image and there was that question mark that the file was updated and as I usually do, told it to overwrite the disk. However, this time there were error messages that could not be resolved and then the image said file could not be found. Going back into Photoshop, the file was in recents but would not open. When I went to the folder where it was supposed to be located, it was gone and no search on my computer found it and not in the Bin either and now it is no longer in my Photoshop recents. I'm still on Photoshop 2022, have not yet upgraded. I'm so frustrated that I have to recreate all the edits.

[GD Teach]

We have had it happen a few more times but have been fortunate not to be very often or on anything major. I curious if one of the key factors is saving it locally versus in the Adobe Cloud? My students save their work into Documents. In all these cases I don't recall anyone having this happen when working in the Cloud? It shouldn't matter, but if we can find a common link maybe it will help.

[ericar13]

I save it locally on an external hard drive. I don't save anything in the Cloud. I am a photographer and my files are large, I don't want to pay more for cloud storage. But that reminds me, I do pay for a backup service so I'm going to check and see if the file is there.

[D Fosse]

I save it locally on an external hard drive.

By @ericar13

That's another thing I wouldn't do. External drives are always vulnerable to worn and loose connectors. The USB3 connectors don't look very firmly anchored to me, especially since USB3 cables are usually very stiff and inflexible.

Given the potentially unstable connection, copying the file over is much safer than saving directly to the disk, simply because it goes so much faster. A save is a long process, and it only takes a little bump.

In short, save to a local hard-wired drive, then copy to external.

It's also a fact that most external drives are FAT32 formatted from the factory, which is always problematic on Mac, and possibly on Windows too. We see occasional cases where the save simply stalls.

[berniew42487286]

I've been working with photoshop for 30 years and never had a problem like this before what ever the cause.

[D Fosse]

I don't really know what to say.

I have a working archive of over 100.000 files by now, all on local high-capacity drives sitting inside my computer case.

I do probably 50 or so individual save operations in one day (estimated minimum average).

I have done this in a professional capacity for 15 years.

That's a lot of saves over the years. You'd think, on purely statistical grounds, based on sheer volume, that this would have happened to me at least once, right? But it hasn't.

I have backup, obviously, but never needed it except to recover from my own mistakes.

Here are the explanations I can think of:

• The file is saved to a different location than expected (happens to the best of us).
• Saving to a cloud-based desktop.
• Saving over a network (unsupported, never do that).
• Saving to an external drive with worn cable/connectors, or possibly FAT32 formatting.
• Relying on the Home Screen to show the actual files on disk (it doesn't).

[ericar13]

After 20 years of working with PS in a professional capacity, this is the first time I have ever had this happen. It was not saved elsewhere, I checked. It was saved to a new external drive so the connectors aren't old or worn and it I checked my backup service, it wasn't there either. It was a saved file that was where it was supposed to be and I had opened it to make some additional changes then saved and closed. Just saving the file after working on it would not have placed it elsewhere - unless that is some new glitch.  It it couldn't be found anywhere on the computer or external drive.  I had to redo the edits. Fortunately, it wasn't a major amount of work. 

[D Fosse]

Late edit to my post above: after paying attention to what I actually do as I work, I have to bump up the number of individual saves per day considerably. I tend to save 10-20 times during work on a single file alone. Multiply that by, say, 5 to 50 files a day.

[Pedro31411315kzph]

Sorry late reply for this old thread, but i've noticed that you are a little reluctant to understand that people are missing files, and photoshop is making them disappear. So I'll tell you, I just saved an image in a folder, not external drive, opened it with Photoshop, edit, and when i exported the PNG saving it to the same folder it disappear completely, it's nowhere. Same thing happens when i overwrite files. I havent noticed a pattern and it seems to happen randomly.

[Сергей28026943x50j]

Здравствуйте! Отработал 2 ограмных проекта, 2 дня сохранял копии, как выяснилось в папке, куда сохранял ни чего не оказалось! Включил все свои ресурсы, нашёл решение, готов Вам помочь. Мой прямой номер телефона +[Phone number removed for privacy] пишите на WhatsApp передам решение данного вопроса. 

Hello! I worked on 2 huge projects, saved copies for 2 days, as it turned out, there was nothing in the folder where I saved it! I have included all my resources, found a solution, and am ready to help you. My direct phone number is +[phone number removed for privacy] write to WhatsApp and I will give you a solution to this issue.