Skip to main content
Participant
December 8, 2019
Answered

Photoshop freezing at 99% when saving file.

  • December 8, 2019
  • 37 replies
  • 103404 views

Hi. At about a week long I cant save files with smart objects and smart effects. Saving always freezing at 99% and force quit is needed. After Im not able to start PS and I need to restart mac. All the changes I made are lost of course. Is it a bug or is there any solution? Thx

Correct answer jacquelingphoto2017

I'm still read through the 7+ pages is comments here - but to chime in re : my own experience, I'm on a Microsoft computer and saving to the local HD and have been having the same issue all week - including resulting in a corrupt file now today. Very frustrating. 


Hi @Mallory5FE2 ,

Sorry to hear about your damaged file. Please follow the information at https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop/photoshop-freezing-at-99-when-saving-file/m-p/11651448#M491185 

This should resolve the problem. If you are saving to local disk then the small files have used up all your memory and your virtual memory is not sufficient to manage the files. Follow the instructions for the settings suggested and remove files you are finished with or not working with to an external drive.

Best wishes

JG

Photographer and Nutrition Author 

 

37 replies

Participant
February 3, 2023

This is still a problem with Photoshop in 2023. It's costing a lot of time having to wait for the 99% to finnish. What is PS doing? Saving eveything on the cloud without user permission? We are working with confidential projects and are only saving files or a server locally.

PickyRicky
Participating Frequently
February 3, 2023
Have you tried my suggested fix for this? It worked for me but obviously no
guarantees that it will work for you as I suspect there is more than one
thing that leads to this problem. Anyway, try disabling file compression
in Photoshop Preferences (under File Handling). Also, if your operating
system is compressing files during saving then try also disabling this. It
will cost you lots more disk space but it should speed things up
considerably and may actually fix your problem. I have found a happy
compromise where I allow OS compression but do not allow Phoroshop to also
compress files.
Participant
July 17, 2022

The 2022 version of Ps is not working well. Everytime i want to save a file it stalls at 99%  for several minutes each file. This is extremely frustrating, it is not a wifi issue, it is not the cache in photoshop problem mentioned in this thread, it is not defrag or RAM. At this point I might go buy a brand new laptop just to see if that would work at all. Very frustrated. Been using Ps since 2011, it was far better as a computer software install CS5, CS6 era days. Annoying that I pay for Ps and Ai every month and I cannot get any productivity out of the tools. I should be billing Adobe $9.99 everytime it takes 17 minutes to save an image. Thank you for continuing to adjust the products so they work even more poorly than they have before. Please fix the issue. A 30 minute project is now taking 2-3 days to complete. Not acceptable

jacquelingphoto2017
Community Expert
Community Expert
July 17, 2022

Hi @Anthony25281867iqev,

There's no need to buy a new laptop. It's a Ps issue and it has been this way for a long time. It is surprising that the engineers did not identified the issue and have it fixed. I cannot use the keyboard shortcut to move the file around to edit. I cannot enter the file information. If I do any of the above the app freezes. I remove many files from my computer to create more space to improve the vertual memory and that don't help.

I hope the engineers fix it soon.

Best wishes

Jacquelin 

Inspiring
December 19, 2021

Same to me, almost 2 years after the problem was tagged, still no solution from Adobe.

  • Using PS 22 v 23.1.0
  • Intel Core i7-8750H CPU @ 2.20GHz
  • 32 GB RAM
  • 1 To SSD
  • Windows 10 (and now Windows 11) 64b
  • Canon 6D RAW files.

 

Saving PSD in uncompressed mode is a bit faster, but still very slow when there are more than 3 layers.

Known Participant
December 20, 2021

I don't know if anyone has mentioned this, but I made the problem stop by quitting out of other programs while using Photoshop. 
Any browser (Safari, Chrome), any messaging service (Telegram), any musuc streaming. All switched off.  They all use processing power, especially if you have anything running that is trying to show you adverts with video. 
Sometimes I'll also quit Lightroom, and even Mail. 
I'm able to work on files with many layers. Saving sometimes takes a while, but photoshop doesn't crash. 

Fine Art P
Inspiring
November 20, 2021

The progress bar has been a hilarious software feature for decades, it hits 99% in one second, then sticks there for minutes.

 

One workaround I have found is to execute an edit from a menu (using mouse not keyboard) after it's been stuck at 99%. For example Edit>copy. That will usually make the saving progress bar go away.

 

FYI/FWIW: I have 64GB RAM, 3.5 GHz Xeon

PickyRicky
Participating Frequently
November 20, 2021
Interesting. I managed to get rid of the issue by disabling compression of
PSD files in Photoshop Preferences and disabling Windows file compression.
Both sped up saving on their own but saving files really flies now. File
sizes mushroomed but nothing sticks at 99% saved any more.
Mohit Goyal
Community Manager
Community Manager
June 24, 2021

Hi all,

 

We're sorry for the save stuck issue. Could you please update Photoshop to the 22.4.2 version via the Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop app and check if that helps to resolve the problem?

 

For more info related to updating Creative Cloud apps, see this: https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/help/creative-cloud-updates.html

 

Thanks,

Mohit

Shastasnow
Participant
June 18, 2021

What I do is save again. It will say you cannot because it is already saving. Close out of that and just wait a bit. If it is a large file it is expected and can be frustrating. This is one solution I use and no need to restart your computer and loose or break files. Just sometimes a second trigger helps it along.

 

Shastasnow
Participant
June 18, 2021

Lose. Lol

Participant
June 12, 2021


I have had this issue for the last year or two, whether it would be on my Mac at home or my Mac at work (which has the maximum upgrades all around and OS is up to date, so there's really no excuse there, Adobe) and no external drives are primarily used. I noticed that you are still able to save the working art files as a new file... which I'll do so I don't lose any of my sanity and efforts. After that "new" file is saved, I'll just restart my Macs. It's a pain, but the only thing that works for me until this is resolved. 

jacquelingphoto2017
Community Expert
Community Expert
June 12, 2021

Hi @PoisonSpivey ,

I'm sorry for your issue. The issue you are having is a memory issue. That is why when you restart your computer it works. What is happening the workload you have on your computer is too much for the memory to carry, hence, Photoshop is using your hard drive (virtual memory). When that runs out it find it difficult to save, or creates a crash. follow my suggestion at  https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/help/creative-cloud-updates.html . That should resolve the problem.

 

Best wishes

JG

Mohit Goyal
Community Manager
Community Manager
May 19, 2021

Hi all,

 

We're sorry for the stuck issue. Could you please update Photoshop to the 22.4 version via the Creative Cloud Desktop app and check if that helps to resolve the save stuck issue. To know how to update, check out the following link: https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/help/creative-cloud-updates.html

 

Let us know if that helps.

Thanks,

Mohit

PickyRicky
Participating Frequently
April 16, 2021

I have also been experiencing the 99% frozen issue on a Windows 10 PC.
The solution for me was to tick the "Disable Compression of PSD and PSB files" checkbox under Photoshop Preferences/File Handling.  Also, disabling the OS from compressing files led to further speeding up.  See table below for results on a large PSB file when opening and saving it with and without NTFS and Photoshop file compression.  Note that the processor is a fairly hairy i9 9900K so the processing load to provide the compression, especially the Photoshop compression, must be very high.
So, provided you can put up with the extra disk space requirements, disabling one or both varieties of file compression may solve the problem for you as it did for me.

PhotoShop CompressionNTFS CompressionFile Size (Bytes)Time To Open (s)Time To Save (s)
NN5,147,262,9765.116.20
NY2,518,827,00824.445.23
YN2,523,701,24823.73108.30
YY2,518,827,00824.67133.41
Participant
April 16, 2021

I'm still having these problems now among lots of other Adobe issues, the thing that bothers me the most about this particular bug is it's not just the one file you lose... you're unable to save any of the other open files.  

jacquelingphoto2017
Community Expert
Community Expert
April 16, 2021

Hi @default1x9aj1mkai7y , 

Sorry to hear about you experience. Did you try the suggestions at https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop/photoshop-freezing-at-99-when-saving-file/m-p/11651448#M491185 

 

Regards

JG

 

 

PickyRicky
Participating Frequently
April 17, 2021
Not quite sure what you mean by this question as my post was a solution
that worked for me and will hopefully work for others too.