Randomly corrupted PSD when saving out JPG

[Nigel Grimstead]

I was working on a commission, getting ready to save out a few JPG renders, then I quickly noticed that the first JPG's thumbnail looked strange; upon opening it rendered looked like a crusty dank meme. When I looked back at the open PSD it too was suddenly corrupt—thankfully I saved out another JPG prior to show the client before moving on. Here is a comparison of what the PSD went from looking like before and after it corrupted:

I've never seen a PSD corrupt file saving out a JPG before. All the layers existed however some were completely blank, others were missing the exact same rectangle cut-out in the middle, and very few were practically untouched. This isn't my first time having a large file with many layers, so I want to believe that this corruption is the result of a new bug.

Details of the event: 
- I'm using PS 2022 version 23.2.2 — I didn't know there was another update is avaible at the time, I have disabled creative cloud's on-startup auto updates and other features through task manager to spare my RAM and whatnot.
- The PSD is 979 MB in size, and I wasn't using the auto recovery system so there were no other versions or temp files to reference.
- All my other PSD files on this computer are perfectly fine regardless of  date, size, and drive location.
- There were no area blackouts at the time of corruption (I'm also using a hefty APC surge arrest bar) and no major background applications processes running aside from idle spotify, discord, norton 360 antivirus, and google chrome.
- I restarted my computer and reinstalled my nvidia drivers thinking it was a display issue and that changed nothing.

Here is my computer specs:
WIN 10 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 8-Core Processor 3.80 GHz
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 (DirectX runtime version 12.0)

Hopefully this is just an issue with the 23.2.2 version. I'm going to update PS right now, yet I'm still haunted and vexed by the potential that this corruption could happen again at any moment with my precious files.

[Andrew Sender]

Hi @Nigel Grimstead ,

Sorry you experienced this issue.  I wanted to follow-up and see how the update to Ps 23.3.1 has gone for you.  Did the update help resolve your issue?

Cheers,

Andrew

[Nigel Grimstead]

Photoshop 23.3.1 seems to be working as intended today, yet I had been working with 23.2.2 for a little over a month and hadn't had an inssue until yesterday.
It will most likely be a while before a corruption such as this happens again, its hard to tell because it does seem utterly random given the original circumstance in which it occured—which is also why I strongly believe it was tied to that version of PS, but I cannot be certain. Speaking of versions; why is it that the details of new versions on the creative cloud services are entirely vauge? It would be peace of mind to know exactly how you're improving or fixing something down to the details, considering how frequently updates are being released. I always appreciate all the hard work that goes into sustaining such an amazing application, and I understand that it is supremely complex so bugs like this are bound to happen at some point.
I also think this particular type of corruption may be linked to this bug from 2018, despite that being a completely different version of PS, the corruptions are alarmingly similar.
Note: I did use a few different PSD recovery/restoration tools and it changed nothing about the file.

[Andrew Sender]

Hi @Nigel Grimstead ,

Are you referring to something like this for the details of new versions? https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/fixed-issues.html . And we really appreciate you as a customer.  Thank you for getting back to us 🙂

Regarding the 2018 bug, I haven't seen reports of that specific corruption for awhile.

-Andrew

[Nigel Grimstead]

Thank you that link is really handy! Does that page just get updated every time a new release is published? Like I could just bookmark that page so I could refer to it when another update rolls out?
I checked the fixed issues for prior versions page and there was no mention of this type of corruption (possibly too niche).
If it helps; the JPG I rendered out prior to the corrupted one was highest quality making it 9mb, so I knew what mb to expect, and when I exported another JPG it estimated 7mb—which is drastically different in size for the exact same image—so for a moment I thought it was weird yet rendered it anyways. It was as if the program purposfully made or preordained the corrupted file and I was none the wiser. I've never experienced that kind of corruption before, it's so wild. That's why I made the title of this discussion more precise to the possible cause so it's easier to find on google, just in case it does happen to another person (regardless of their software version).

[jane-e]

I was working on a commission, getting ready to save out a few JPG renders, then I quickly noticed that the first JPG's thumbnail looked strange; upon opening it rendered looked like a crusty dank meme.

By @Nigel Grimstead

Can you tell us your steps to "render" the JPEGs? Are you rendering to 3D? Video? Something else?

Jane

[Nigel Grimstead]

@jane-e just control + shift + S using "JPEG" option from the drop down menu, maximum quality with progressive format scans: 3. Then when it saved out the corrupted image it simotainousely corrupted the PSD without me having to do anything else.

[Andrew Sender]

It gets updated after each release, so please do bookmark it.

And yes, going from 9MB to 7MB sounds wild.  And thanks for sharing your steps.  It does sound like the 979MB PSD file was corrupted in some manner.  By any chance, was there any other app/program which opened or edited this PSD file?

-Andrew

[Nigel Grimstead]

I use no other program other than photoshop to open the PSD files. I honestly miss the way Mac could just preview a PSD with their photo viewer system; recently I've been trying to replicate that effect by exporting and overwriting a JPG while having the same JPG open in windows photo viewer, and it does auto update at the same speed Mac's equivlent. At the time of corruption, that JPG was not in use by any program. I could rationalize how being open in the viewer could have corrupted it, but that wasn't the case. The corruption of the PSD in particular truly feels like a phenomenon, personally I've never experienced any kind of project corrupt itself while open in it's program (like if it corrupt did it would just crash all together, not just erase layer information or just certain parts of them and leave others untouched.) A part of me wants to blame Windows for not being as optimized for adobe products the way Mac is, but I'm probably just being salty.
I did set up windows file history and norton 360's backup system in case this happens again. The only other thing I can do is give you the original corrupted PSD to examine if it would help identify exactly what had happened to it.

[Andrew Sender]

Are you saying the Preview.app can't open your PSD file?  You're welcome to share the corrupted PSD.  I don't know how much insight my team or I can provide, but doesn't hurt to share if that's okay.

[Nigel Grimstead]

Oh no, it can; but I was referring to fining a new method similar to the way preview.app works on Mac. On PC: I now have to export a JPG and open that in windows version of preview in order to see what my PSD would currently look like. I like to see the image I'm producing on the desktop screen because it provides a different POV and allows me to see details I may have missed, as well as slight color/lighting differences compared to the tablet screen. I had been using a 2013 macbook pro for the majority of my illustration career, and I just upgraded to buying a pre-built PC, but I really do miss having those few convieniet functionallities Mac software has when it comes to PSD previewing, etc...
I will send a copy of that corrupted PSD file to the address you provided, thanks!