Photoshop freezing at 99% when saving file.

[Johnee_Oneal]

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

[jacquelingphoto2017]

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#M491...

Regards

JG

[PickyRicky]

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.

[PickyRicky]

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 Compression	NTFS Compression	File Size (Bytes)	Time To Open (s)	Time To Save (s)
N	N	5,147,262,976	5.11	6.20
N	Y	2,518,827,008	24.4	45.23
Y	N	2,523,701,248	23.73	108.30
Y	Y	2,518,827,008	24.67	133.41

[Mohit Goyal]

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

[PoisonSpivey]

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]

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

[Shastasnow]

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]

Lose. Lol

[Mohit Goyal]

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

[Fine Art P]

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]

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.

[Fre5D95]

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.

[richardn]

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. 

[Corniger]

Do you have only one SSD?

I have a dedicated SSD for scratch, one for programs, one for system, one for data plus one large HDD for storage. That works well. External RAID for backups is recommended.
Since a 6D doesn't have very high resolution, this should do the job on your system! SSDs are cheap, so give it a try. Just be careful not to overuse your SATA port, since they usually come in pairs, use only one of the 2 for the drives that need to be FAST.
I just checked you CPU specs and since you're apparently using a Laptop, my advice is useless. These are pretty much bound to be slow...  except by using several external SSDs on fast, independent ports, I'm afraid that's the problem. 

[Anthony25281867iqev]

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]

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 

[PickyRicky]

I posted a fix that worked for me some while ago but I'll repeat it here.
In my case, I found the thing that was taking all the time when saving was
the compression of files, both by Photoshop and the operating system
(Windows 10 in my case).
Try going to Photoshop Preferences and under File Handling, tick the box
that says "Disable compression of PSD and PSB files".
Then go into Explorer or Finder and see if your OS is also applying file
compression. In Windows Explorer, go to the folder to which you are saving
your files. Right click on this folder and select "Properties". Under
"Attributes", click "Advanced" and untick "Compress contents to conserve
disk space". I'm afraid I don't know the equivalent steps to this in Mac
Finder.
Now try saving a large file and see if the 99% issue has gone away or at
least that it doesn't persist for so long.
I found on my system that disabling the OS file compression didn't make
much difference on its own. Disabling the Photoshop file compression
speeded saving up by about a factor of 4 but disabling both Photoshop and
Windows compression sped saving up by a factor of about 20!

Clearly, disabling compression will mean your files take up more disk space
so there is a tradeoff here between disk space and time wasted waiting for
files to save.

[jacquelingphoto2017]

Hi @PickyRicky ,

I tried your suggestion. It doesn't work. I observe that the creative cloud app on my desktop has somehow disappeared. I tried to manually update Ps I'm prompt to search for an app in Microsoft stores to read the file. I searched for the creative clouds app on my desktop only to conclude that it has some how disappeared. I tried downloading the creative cloud app to my computer, I get an error message. That is the current status of this lovely application that has reached the point of almost impossibility.

Regards

Jacquelin

[jo28241628ezu2]

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]

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.

[jacquelingphoto2017]

Hi @jo28241628ezu2 ,

May I ask, are you using a desktop or a laptop? 

You should be getting a pop-up dialogue box with the option to save in cloud or desktop. If you do not see that, then you need to change your preference file handling to local computer. I'm not sure what OS you use. On Mac its Photoshop - Preference - File Handling and set Default file location to "On you computer". 

On PC its Edit - Preference - File Handling and set Default file location to "On your computer". That should solve the file saving issue.

I might be able to help further when you answer the question in this post.

Best wishes

Jacquelin