P: Auto-Save/Recovery function

Report · May 29, 2011

Why doesn't PS have an autosave function? Every time the application crashes, i lose a work of mine, which i've been practicing for hours.

Report · May 29, 2011

If I'm not mistaken, saving files is a mission of the OS, and those operations can be quite taxing for the processor and storage sub-systems.

When one uses Photoshop, one wants to work at full speed.
Some users disconnect from the network and turn off their anti-virus to work without hurdles. If there was an auto-save, it could hurt users who work on huge files, as it would slow down Photoshop tremendously.

So, if such a system was in place, it would need to be set up by the user, not a default setting. (According to what I read, Apple is working on the saving of the files for Lion, we might need to wait to see what they are up to, then would need to wait for Redmont's (Microsoft) answer.)

If this becomes a feature request, I'd like that function to also have an incremental saving option: it could save your document in V1, V2, etc. giving a way to go back in time to another version (but it seems that it is what Apple is working on, again, so it is worth spending time on something that might happen anyways?)

I would rather troubleshoot your system to see what crashes Photoshop... It is one of the most stable applications out there in a well maintained and properly scaled system.
(see: http://blogs.adobe.com/crawlspace/201... )

When does the crash occur?
What are your machine's specifications?
What other software is running? (especially stuff that work all the time in the background, like Anti-Virus, tuning, or OS modifying software) What Photoshop plug-ins do you use?
Are you running the latest version of Photoshop, and its plug-ins? (see: http://blogs.adobe.com/crawlspace/201... )

And without sounding like an old teacher, one should not work for hours without saving... but we all know that and do not always practice it 😉

Report · May 29, 2011

»one should not work for hours without saving...«
True.

Anyway the subject has been discussed at some length in the user-to-user Forum and to me the programming effort and performance issues such a feature (basically intended to protect people from their own workflow choices) would incur seem wasteful.

Report · Jun 03, 2011

Reported in the u2u forum:

I have developed a PsdAutoSave plugin which is available at
http://www.electriciris.com/psdautosa...

http://forums.adobe.com/message/28755...

Report · Jun 03, 2011

To add some perspective, there would be tradeoffs with a feature like this: With the way that Photoshop currently works, auto-save essentially would lock a user out from working in Photoshop while the save occurs. (I believe that's what happens with the Electric Iris solution above) This certainly helps remind you to save at regular intervals, and there's value in that. At the same time, if you're working on a 2 gig file saving every 5-10 minutes might get pretty painful. If the save process was a on separate thread/process, you could continue to work, but there could be a performance hit while the save is happening. For these issues - as sighted by Christoph, such a feature would probably have to be user configurable to manage the tradeoffs.

Report · Jun 11, 2011

Settable either in two styles: a. every X amount of time ask, "Do you want to save now?" b. When Photoshop is idle for X amount of time and changes have been made. Should be settable in Photoshop Preferences/Settings to turn the feature on and off and the intervals with which it is done. I tend to go into trances and forget if I've saved.

Also crash protection along the same line. Such that it makes a smaller version of the file we can boot off of if Photoshop crashes/freezes (Painter has this as well as many other programs)--which tends to be frequent since I run other programs in conjunction with Photoshop. (AI, for example). I'd like with it, savable history with the crash protection. Sometimes Photoshop crashes when I'm undoing or playing with undos, so then I often have to either start over, which is a pain, or undo manually, which is equally a pain. (Maybe make it also an option with saving the file.)

Report · Jul 14, 2011

I've used Photoshop since version 3.0 and it badly needs to implement journaling. There's just been too many instances where the application has crashed and I've lost work. Yes, I try to save frequently. Because there are so many ways the application could fault including many beyond its control such as video drivers, the best way to help users be productive is to help them recover lost images without needing to remember everything the user did, and to have to sit at the computer all over again repeating the lost work when the application could recover the lost operations automatically.

Microsoft Office and SQL Server have journaling. Given the price of Photoshop, it needs it too. I won't buy another version until it does.

Report · Jul 14, 2011

While Auto Save will bog down the application periodically, journaling would have minimal impact. To do that, PS would save a log file with all information needed to recreate the image from its initial state. Photoshop actually has a log feature now, it's just not detailed enough.

It's not necessary to save all the pixels. What's needed is to record in sequence which tool is in use, the operation selected for it, and the value(s) input to the tool. That is a very small amount of data. If PS crashes, the file could be reopened and the journal "replayed" to reconstruct all the user's edits. Ideally, it should be possible to stop replaying before the last few operations (the number selected by the user) in case the crash is repeatable. That would allow the user to save before the bad action and then diagnose the problem further.

Report · Jul 14, 2011

>> To do that, PS would save a log file with all information needed to recreate the image from its initial state.

That would still require gigabytes of data being written per minute for many users. Photoshop is not a simple parameter/metadata editing system (like Lightroom or video editors). And the parameters that go into each operation are probably more complex than you realize. Only the simplest commands (invert, blur, etc.) are simple enough to journal in the way you propose.

Report · Aug 18, 2011

I feel Jeffrey .. the performance may impact initially but later phase it can be optimized. Like Robert has tried PSD autosave. Initiall PS4 also was not user friendly and performance also was that good. Still it has come through many version till date.

Report · Aug 26, 2011

Auto save same as Adobe Premiere
Auto Recovery same as Adobe Audition

Report · Aug 26, 2011

Nice one
yeah it should be good enough....
But in PS5 Extended its not there

Report · Sep 12, 2011

Hi there... I'm a newer user of CS5 and (probably) asking what you have certainly heard multiple times. No autosave?! I must nieve in my thinking that just about every program had that feature. The biggest hurt today, though, was having the program crash as I was saving. Hoping for a feature like this as an option for future updates 🙂 ~ Sherry

Report · Sep 13, 2011

Doesn't Painter do journaling? (though not an Adobe Product) Just wondering how that and this differs. Why can Painter do it and Photoshop can't?

Report · Nov 03, 2011

Autosave and Open recent photoshop temp file. Thanks if you will include this in next versions of Photoshop or any Adobe products.

Report · Nov 03, 2011

I agree is not.

Report · Nov 23, 2011

Dear Adobe Gripes #12614 & #11898

"AUTOSAVE, like aftereffects!"

"pleasee autosave in Photoshop!!!"

Report · Feb 01, 2012

A função AUTO SAVE seria muitíssimo interessante,outra coisa legal seria uma função que permitisse salvar todos os conjuntos de actions juntos,são soluções mais práticas para os usuários,as vezes falta a luz e é muito chato perder um psd/trabalho de 5 ou 10 horas,é igualmente chato ter que salvar conjunto por conjunto de actions,queria poder salvar todos de uma vez só!

Uma idéia talvez bem clichê e manjada mas no CS6 seria legal ter isso,é

Report · Feb 01, 2012

>> translated

An AUTO SAVE function would be very interesting. Another nice feature would be something that lets you save all the sets of actions together. It is very annoying to lose a psd / work 5 or 10 hours, and is annoying to have to save a whole set of actions - I wish I could save all at once!

A good idea, perhaps cliché and formulaic, but it would be very nice if CS6 had it.

Report · Feb 01, 2012

Remember that Adobe now has an upgrade policy that requires users to stay in lockstep with new versions in order to receive upgrade discounts. A lot of users want Autosave. This is a feature that would make people interested, myself included, in buying a new version. Compared to a lot of other features released lately and UI changes that seem to me like window dressing rather than improvements, this one would improve user productivity, save us some valuable time, and make the product worth buying.

Chris Cox commented earlier that journaling would use gigabytes of data per minute. If that's the case, then the product might need to be rearchitected to reduce the data flow for some operations. I think that effort might bear a lot of fruit in making a better application with tighter code, as well as make journaling possible.

Report · Feb 01, 2012

The only way to avoid the full data hit of journaling would be to get rid of pixels and use only vectors or go to just parametric editing (ala Lightroom).
As long as you can do arbitrary operations on pixels, you've got a lot of data to move around, and the only way to store all results is to store the pixels.

Also, armchair development works less often than armchair quarterbacking.

Report · Feb 01, 2012

Check out this sneak featuring Background Save:

Report · Feb 01, 2012

@Jeffrey

Cool! Considering that is it possible to also do any of the following:

1. Save documents that are idle for X amount of time where X is settable by the user?

2. Protect History/ New Presets in the event of a crash. (How much history in the event of a crash could be settable as well).

3. Save documents at certain intervals by the user? (As an option)

Mostly the auto save is protection from a crash, yes? Can Adobe take it that one step further to make the protection possible?

I know those things have been previously done, so it can't be that difficult to implement them off of preexisting models.

Report · Feb 01, 2012

If that's true, then why not implement it for Flash and Illustrator? Illustrator crashes a lot on me, so I'd like some sort of crash protection. (I make some really detailed vectors and store lots of reference images before dumping them.)

Report · Feb 01, 2012

Yes. Background Save should enable those types of things. Stay tuned. 🙂

Report · Feb 04, 2012

This is excellent. One of the major roadblocks to saving frequently is that PS locks the UI once a save starts. If a user can save and then resume working on an image, this is a real step forward. Users don't save frequently because it interrupts their work. Make the process easier, and users will save more often.

Protecting History would also be a form of journaling. History is already a journal, and despite past comments on the difficulty of doing it, the fact is that journaling is already there. The real question is how to integrate History into relaunching the application after a crash to bring a user back to a snapshot. Another way to look at Autosave is the idea of saving snapshots of the image at periodic time or operation intervals and make recovery to a desired snapshot possible after a relaunch.

I'm glad to see that Adobe seems to be responding to this need after all.

P: Auto-Save/Recovery function

1 Correct answer