PSD file will not open in Photoshop

[Dr.Polygon]

I am getting a "could not complete your request becasue it is not the right kind of document" error when I try to open a PSD file I created a few days ago.  I am using Photoshop 2022 on a Windows 11 PC.  I use photoshop every day, and I have never seen this before.  Is this a corrupted file?  Is there a way to recover it?

Any help would be appreciated.  Thanks!

[TheDigitalDog · Accepted solution]

Could be corrupted. Can you zip and upload to something like Dropbox so others can examine it?

Is it only this one PSD?

[Dr.Polygon]

It is only this one PSD.  Here is a shared dropbox link:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bihn5o7055b1d4w/B7_Shot_02_01.psd?dl=0

Thanks!

[TheDigitalDog]

It's hosed. My copy of Photoshop (and Preview, and GraphicConverter) can't open it.

[Dr.Polygon]

Yeah, I can't open it either.  Thank you for the confirmation.  Any chance of recovery on this?  As this has never happened before, I suppose I just chalk it up to bad luck and move on.  I just hate it when things go wrong for no reason.

[TheDigitalDog]

Short of having a backup, I have no idea how one would 'fix' this document. 

You also want to start checking your hard drive to see it's up to snuff so this doesn't happen again. 

Lastly, you might consider avoiding PSD and instead use TIFF. Lots of reasons but a big one is, far more products support opening TIFF and it might have been possible to find one that could open this document unless it's completely hosed. I tried three that support PSD, no go. 

There is nothing PSD brings to the party you can't get with TIFF. 

[Dr.Polygon]

This was my first pass with this document so I hadn't had a chance to save incrementally yet.  TIFF doesn't save layers so that is a no go for me.  I build animations from the artwork so I need lots of layers. Luckily, I have a PNG export I can refer to when I redo it, so I have something to go on.  My hard drives are all new and devoted to this work exclusively so they are not likely the problem.  I hadn't thought of that as a possible issue though, so I suppose I could test the drive to make sure there isn't an issue there.  Thank you again for your help.

[TheDigitalDog]

TIFF absolutely saves layers and more.

http://digitaldog.net/files/TIFFvsPSD.pdf

[Dr.Polygon]

well color me enlightened.  Thank you.  I will look into that.

[jane-e]

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@Dr.Polygon wrote:

well color me enlightened.

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Thank you for bringing this up Dr. Polygon.

TIFF did not support layers in the early days when Aldus first developed it. Nor did it support transparency if I recall correctly. Here's what Adobe Help says about TIFF:

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/file-formats.html

Developers can use private tags for TIFF. The tags have numbers. I don't know, but I suppose it's the private tags that allow layers, transparency, and more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIFF

Six years ago a user asked about private tags in this forum, but the question was never answered.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-discussions/tiff-tag-34377-photoshop-image-resour...

This answer on the Affinity forum is interesting.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/105912-tiff-export-layers-opened-in-photoshop-gets...

I would love to hear more about the private tags and what they do for TIFFs if anyone has a link on the Adobe website or if a staff member sees this and can enlighten us.

Jane

[Dr.Polygon]

Yes, more info is always appreciated.  It appears Photoshop is saving the TIFF file as a package of TIFF images to store the layer data.  Even though the file size is a bit larger, I DO like the idea of having another format to save in as a way of preserving the file.  At the moment, I am considering keeping a TIFF version of my files as a alternate save for archive purposes, but I don't think this is going to change my current practice of saving incrementally (_001, _002, etc) to prevent major loss from file corruption.  It has served me well for many years, and this loss appears to be the first time I have found a corrupt save in PSD that could not be attributed to a power issue, hard drive failure, etc.  So far, the PSD format has proven to be very stable and accessible to many itterations of the software.  I rarely need to open a very old file, but I have been able to access 20+ year old documents without any issue on occasion.  Except for missing fonts, I haven't run into any problems until now.

[Dave_Tr.]

Dr.Polygon, do you have any updates as to how this has been going? I had the exact same problem on several PSD files lately. Like you, I also make incremental backups of the PSD. It's still a pain though when you have to revert back to an earlier one. I've been creating large and complex PSD's for 9 or 10 years now, and never had this problem until recently, and it is strange that it suddenly happened to multiple PSD's for me. I did run chkdsk and another utility that checks for disk errors, and none were reported.

I also was not aware that saving as a TIF also saves layers. Does it save all types of layers, including layer masks? Are you finding any limitations at all in using a TIF in place of a PSD? For example, if you have "saved selections" in the PSD, is that also saved in a TIF? Is all the EXIF data maintained?

Thanks.

[Dr.Polygon]

Hi Dave,

After exhaustive testing of my components, I have determined my motherboard is at fault.  I have an intermittently problematic RAM slot.  It is a LGA 2011 motherboard so I have put this on the back shelf.  Luckily, I have a newer machine I have switched all my active projects to, so this old PC is reserved for word docs, email, and web research until I decide how much money I want to put into hardware upgrades to fix it. Hence I have not adopted the TIF save protocol, so I cannot answer your questions there.  I also use ArtRage to create hose brush effects which requires a PSD file to load and save to, so the TIF pipeline is problematic for me.  Good luck with your woes my friend.

[Dave_Tr.]

Hi Dr.Polygon.  Thanks for your reply.  I suspect there are several things that the TIF will not be able to handle.  I have to try that out sometime when I have more time.  Regarding the disk check utilites, here is a good link:

https://www.lifewire.com/check-and-fix-hard-drive-errors-3506860#:~:text= 

[Dr.Polygon]

What hard drive test would you suggest to guage the health of the drive btw?