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Attention, Photoshop might delete your files…

by 9 Comments

Photoshop is a complex program, so it’s “normal” to have minor bugs and small issues. But, while minor bugs are usually forgiven, deleting files, even on rare occasions, is not something that should ever happen

We’ve found a somewhat rare occasion that can delete your file – and this is not a minor issue, this is a horrible fail.

 

If you are on a Mac and you are using the APFS file system*, you can recreate it by following these steps. It mostly affects big PSB files, but not only those.

  1. Create a huge PSB file (this issue also happens with smaller files, but it’s easier to recreate with a huge file)
  2. Open the file in Photoshop
  3. Save the file
  4. cancel the saving process by pressing ESC or the cross in the status bar

Have a look at your source file – it’s gone. We would expect the previous version of the file to be there, but no, its gone… forever…

The good news, this is not happening on Windows or other filesystems on MAC.

Here is a video showing the bug in progress:

* why, oh, why did you do that?

Related posts:

Start your color grade with the Infinite Color Panel Adobe releases roadmap of new features for Photoshop on iPad Adobe adds Select Subject feature to Photoshop on iPad Today is Photoshop’s 30th birthday – Here’s a reminder of what Version 1 looked like

About Stefan Kohler

Stefan Kohler is a full time retoucher. He's from Germany and likes bacon. In the last years he built up a broad community around his retouching classes at RAWexchange. You can follow his work at his portfolio.

  • Easy. Don’t stop it saving?
    Surely it doesn’t have to pop up saying ‘Don’t mess with anything while i save. Especially stopping the save?’

    • soul68

      The trap is, if you have a huge PSB, and realize after you start to save that you needed one more edit, and reactively stop it, then you’re screwed. The hugeness of the PSB give you plenty of time to think about that. I try to take bathroom breaks instead.

  • Remember, there is no cloud. It’s just someone else’s computer.

    • Someone’s well configured computer that also is backing up. It would more reliable than most personal computers

    • Did I say anything about reliability? It’s someone else’s computer, for better and worse. It’s backed up, unless it’s not. It’s always there, until they decide otherwise. I’ve lost data on my own computer, and I’ve lost data in the cloud.

  • soul68

    I’ve been having this issue for years with saving files directly from PS on my Mac to our Windows server.
    Stop it halfway through, the file is gone. I just know not to do that and installed an APC.

    Still I’ve lost 3-4 really important files over the last 5 years.

  • Joe Purvis

    For the first time, I actually lost a PSB file the other day. I have autosave set to every 5 minutes as I routinely work on photos for over an hour each. Finally I saved the PSB file as I finished for the night and the next day it was gone. PSBs can take awhile to save, so I wait for it to finish saving. The PSB file no longer existed in my folder, wasn’t in the recycling bin and I couldn’t figure out what happened. I saw it in the ‘open recent file’ dialog, but it couldn’t be found.

  • What’s apfs?

  • Danilo Mussolini

    This issue has is happening in a network drive too. So, besides APFS, networked shared volumes (at least using SMB protocol) also has this problem.

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