Strange glitch on file - What happened?

[Provazi]

After a few days without opening Photoshop, I opened it today and found my file like this. Some layers have this glitch and are uneditable. The background was supposed to be clean, not like this (it seems like the used fonts created those cutout shapes all over the canvas).

Luckily, the file is just a sketch... but imagine if it were a final version? What happened to this file?
Note: I noticed that other files created around the same time don’t have this issue.

Adobe Photoshop Version: 26.2.0 20241207.r.140 bc85906 x64
Operating System: Windows 10 64-bit

GPUName: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650

[BrettN · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately, file corruption like this can happen in Photoshop or any application and is simply a vulnerablity of all computer technology. Any number of causes may be involved, from interference of a third-party application to an issue with the drive it is stored on.

While it may be possible to look at the file and determine what is wrong with it and possibly repair it in some cases, there is no way to determine why it happened. We'd have to see the machine state at the time of the occurance to even hope to understand what happened. If you want to share the files with us, we can take a look and see if they provide any useful information. 

Hare are some steps you can take to help reduce the chances of file corruption: 

• Keep everything up to date: Photoshop, your OS, security software, hardware drivers, etc
• Maintenance: perform disk scans, empty your trash/recycling bin, clear temp files
• Only run what you need: turn off other applications which you aren't currently using, disable unnecessary background components, disable/unplug periphery devices which aren't in use
• Send crash reports and log bugs: if you find that corruption like this occurs when you follow a particular set of steps, let us know the pattern so we can reproduce on our end and find a way to repair it for a future update