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This article was written on 25 Aug 2006, and is filled under Software.

Photoshop Crashed During a File Save- Now What?!

This happened to me today. A file was in the process of being saved and then Photoshop disappears. So I quickly open it back up and of course, the psd I was trying to save is non-existent.

 

So now what? The .psd is no where to be found, but crap- this is 2006. We’re like on version 73 of photoshop, there must be some type of autosave or temp file or SOMETHING. I figure Google is a good first stop, here’s my search for recover photoshop .tmp file. As I scan the results I see things like: 

Unfortunately it seems to be impossible to recover a Photoshop tmp file”

“i found a photoshop recovery app that says it can recover corrupt psd files. but, alas, it cant handle the temp either”

“I have tried a number of times to recover a Photoshop temp file. It just isn’t worth the effort.”

I look at these results with mixed feelings. On one hand, it seems that photoshop does indeed save a tmp file. On the other hand, its unlikely that I can recover it. So I look in the folder where I was trying to save the file and lo and behold I see a file named ~ps1F4.tmp – I’m still a little leary but what the heck it never hurts to try, right?

Back to Photoshop, File > Open, change the file’s extension from .tmp to .psd and click Open…

Wait for it…

Wait for it…

Hooray! My file is saved! It’s a Christmas miracle!

So that’s my story. If your Photoshop crashes during a file save, I cant promise you’ll have similar results, but what the heck, it never hurts to try before you get back to work recreating the whole mess.

41 Comments

  1. Mark Lund
    February 15, 2007

    Use “OPEN AS…” to recover that .tmp file. It will not show up under “OPEN”

    “OPEN AS…”
    “OPEN AS…”

    It saved my project!

  2. Purple
    March 30, 2007

    Does not work!

  3. Natasha
    May 7, 2007

    pfewww!!!Thanks a lot Pedro, it saved our day in the office!

  4. kat
    May 20, 2007

    hi guys,

    just cried half hour and was swearing at my labtop, cause it crushed during big photoshop project. file could not be found again, though saved 2 min before crash. found ps36.tmp with 60 mb, changed .tmp to .tif, (made a copy first) and open with…photoshop…
    and i got it back!!!!! thanks God! wish all u guys good luck!!!

  5. kat
    May 20, 2007

    oh, just to mention, i changed to tif because it was a tif file before the crash. got my file back, but all the layers i had before (about 30) are now merged together in the background layer. but thats not to bad since i was just finished after 4 days and nights full time work and there should be no more changes necessary. well, now i can to sleep (it’s nearly 4 o’clock in the morning)!

  6. Pixellobby
    September 18, 2007

    my photoshop crashed during file save, but it’s not the file that i couldnt get back. It’s my photoshop! Now it wont launch at all even after re-installing! What is the problem?

  7. gareth
    September 23, 2007

    i couldn’t believe my luck – this worked!

    thanks

  8. Mr. B
    October 9, 2007

    Thank you so much for the “OPEN AS..” hint that ye share:
    I could see the file size of 275mb was still there..so I knew the Photoshop image was inside it somewhere.
    I tried re-naming the file with no luck.
    Thats when I screamed that other word that rhymes with ‘duck!’.
    I feel a poem coming on..must be relief from my sense of dispair..
    Hey! Is anyone listening?..dose anyone care!?

    Thanks again, you saved me alot!
    But can anyone help me? I just cant stop!
    Its getting worse, I’m developing a plot!
    Get it together…I…must…NOT!
    Guess thats what you get for loving Photoshop!

    Thank you, thank you, now click: Back to Top.

  9. Jon-Russell
    October 31, 2007

    I am pissed. After finding this site and having some hope that all wasn’t lost. I tried the renaming the extension thing. Didn’t work. “Could not complete your request because and unexpected end-of-file was encountered.” I mean. WTF? I’m going to slit my wrists now. Goodbye cruel world.

  10. Alexa Adrian
    January 4, 2008

    I can not believe. After I worked such a long time, when i was modifing somtehing with Blending Layers option…the computer started to give hundreds of errors…and in that time trying to save my work…My My…I saw, it was saved kust half and then it stoped. Well after restaring my computer, trying to OPEN AS the tmp file, nothing :( ((((( What shall i do? Any answer at alexa_Adrian2001@yahoo.com

  11. BT
    February 8, 2008

    My Photoshop crashes when I tried to open or save files, without showing the open/save window. The program still running, but and can’t do nothing. To close it I must go to the task manager and end the task manually.
    I re-installed the Photoshop but still not working properly. Can anyone help me?

  12. Pamela
    February 23, 2008

    You are my God.

  13. pedro {sdm}
    February 25, 2008

    Sounds like my experience helped you! I’m glad to hear it.

    ‘God’ is a pretty big word though. I’m not sure I’m willing to tread in that category :-P

  14. Jairo
    March 1, 2008

    I’m trying to recover a file that I lost during the last crash… In what folder can I find the .tmp file?

    Please.. It’s a very important project

  15. Yoav
    May 29, 2008

    This is all well but WHERE does photoshop keep its TMP files??

    In what folder??

  16. Kianoush
    July 8, 2008

    It didn’t save any *.tmp file.
    I pressed “Ctrl+Shift+S” to “save as” and ps crashed. Even the “Borrows” windows didn’t come up to save the file.
    What can I do? I really need it back.

  17. Aelia
    January 3, 2009

    You saved my digital life!!! lol… just wanted to say a huge “THANK YOU!!!”, you are my hero!

    Did you find out WHY your photoshop crashed during your save? Has it done it before? For the last two days nothing will save. I can save new documents, but when I attempt to alter and save an existing one, it freezes. I’ve had photoshop CS2 with the same settings for over a year, and suddenly it started to freeze yesterday.

    At least thanks to you I can recover what I’ve lost! :D

  18. ALEX
    February 27, 2009

    Like some of the people here i was doing some stuff on photoshop and during the saving process photoshop crashed and now i dont know how to find the tmp file. If i only could find it to try and see if works it’ll be great so…….

    Where da heck are the temp files? i need to know

  19. Alex
    March 25, 2009

    You rock. Just saved my ass on a last minute project!

  20. bliker
    April 14, 2009

    …temp files are in temp folder, Start>Run>%temp%

  21. sanjay
    May 8, 2009

    I dont have any .tmp file is there any other way to revocer corrupted .psd file

  22. Jenn
    June 26, 2009

    Thank you SO MUCH, SO VERY VERY MUCH for this!

    Note: I think it works only if you rename it as the same thing it was originally saved as- I was working with a .jpg and tried renaming it to a psd and tif with no luck.
    Again, THANK YOU! You saved my day!

  23. ungemeinfein
    August 13, 2009

    Dude THX SO MUCH!!
    I was just about to delete this stupid .tmp file after having lost my 2 days work when i read your post, i tried and it worked! Dude this is awesome, thx so much! I love you :D

  24. Tj
    November 14, 2009

    It didn’t work for me, I got the response:
    “could not complete your request because the file is already in use or was left open.”

  25. Ann
    November 18, 2009

    Nothing is working…
    Photoshop Elements 4.0 crashed and I was stupid enough to forget to save before hand.
    I look in temp files and nothing is there or has nothing to do with what was lost…
    I hate this computer… so…. much…..

  26. Ann
    November 18, 2009

    even when i rename possible file and try to open it, it says something like “Could not open because file is not a photoshop file”

  27. Eva
    December 15, 2009

    OK!
    I’m in serious trouble and i could really use the help.
    My PC was running really slow so I saved my psd file. The thing is my pc crashed and when i try to open the file again it said: Could not complete your request because of an unexpected end-of-file was encountered Photoshop.
    I tri the .tmp file thing but i dont have one…
    WHAT CAN I DO???
    I really need the file, it took me two days to do it and I dont have enought time!

    PLEASE!!!! Answer me soon. Im desperate!!!

  28. Happy
    February 5, 2010

    Wow, thank you so much! It worked and it was the easiest thing! Very very happy!

  29. bea
    February 20, 2010

    hmmm…i’ll use this when my photoshop crashes again, but this time it crashed after i saved the file and i was so happy…. but after i tried to open it again it said ‘it is not photoshop compatible’ by file is not broken..T.T
    i tried opening it in image ready and it’s all blue and the colors are wrong
    what should i do? T.T

  30. Gatekeeper
    April 14, 2010

    Thanks a ton for this! Worked for me.

  31. love you...
    May 12, 2010

    I’m sooo excited, I read all of the above and nothing was working until I changed the PS454.tmp to umbrella (the NAME of my original file) and then in actually opened YAY!! THANK YOU!!!

  32. 3DCGdesign
    May 12, 2010

    What happens if you haven’t even saved the file yet?
    Can that file even be recovered?
    I tried open as. I tried .psd I tried .tif. no joy.

    For those asking where the temp files are stored…
    on my Vista Home Crapium 64bit I finally found many Gigs of them here…
    C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local\Temp

    ah well… back to work…

  33. Vic
    August 24, 2010

    for those running Windows 7. I found my photoshop temp files under (user)/AppData/Local/Temp

    good luck!

  34. Kai
    January 23, 2011

    Hi!

    I need emergency help here ;_;

    I have windows 7 with Photoshop 5

    I was drawing on my tablet in program called SAI,I just saved my work in PSD, went and added few more ‘dots’ on it,then saved it again so I can get out of the program,but whole computer froze and I waited for atleast 5-7 min but it wouldn’t unfreeze itself so I manually restarted it. When I turned it on and went to check on my file, it wouldn’t want to open in neither of the programs I have! Every program kept saying: ‘ Could not complete your request because it is not a valid Photoshop document.’

    I searched for it in Temp files,but no luck!
    It still has it size of 4,02 MB
    Changing extension in .png or .tiff doesn’t work either! I really have no more ideas! I even tried downloading few different programs that are supposed to repair psd files,but no luck there either,they kept saying there is nothing to repair…

    Please help me,I’ve been doing this piece whole day, and it’s one of my best works ever,I really don’t want to loose it…

  35. Guilherme
    January 26, 2011

    Windows 7 here, i just found “Photoshop Temp68373452″ a large file, i tried to rename but it does not work.

    Iam using Photoshop CS3

  36. Frank
    April 28, 2011

    Photoshop crashed while saving but I didn’t click close program I looked for the tmp file, so I did find it. Found temp file here (Windows XP)C:\Documents and Settings\*YourUserName*\Local Settings\Temp there it was 538MB. ~ps5467.tmp however it said it was in use so I could not copy it or rename it. To make things worse the instant I tell Photoshop to not send error report, it disappears. So I use file scavenger to look for the deleted file and it is not there! maybe if I did a CTRL/ALT/DEL and ended the task maybe the .tmp would of stayed? So, unable to verify if this would work or not. P.S. Local Settings is a hidden system folder

  37. Frank
    April 28, 2011

    well let me make a correction. file scavenger did find two Photoshop temp files, however if one of the files I saw was the temp file found earlier (I didn’t remember the numbers). Photoshop (even one that already crashed apparently) rewrites the temp file with 0 (zero) bytes then deletes it. SO even if this would work it would have to be a serious enough crash that it did not over write and delete the temp file.

  38. Alyx
    August 24, 2011

    Do you know any way to recover Paint tool SAI .tmp files? that’s 3 days of m life I will never get back and I am desperate to find a solution.

  39. Gregory Teddy
    October 24, 2011

    try system restore!!!!

  40. Anonymous
    November 6, 2011

    I didn’t even save the file… and now I am all poofey eyed and have only a png of the file that I took using Jing to show a person on a forum. It was one of my most realistic from-scratches I’ve ever done. http://content.screencast.com/users/ashhassan/folders/Jing/media/1fa784c6-e783-43d3-acbc-3fd647f00a4f/2011-11-06_2009.png

    I made it better after this… it was even more realistic…

    *curses out adobe for making a 2000 dollar software without a mother******* clipboard like thing…..*

  41. Alex Noyle
    November 6, 2011

    OMG OMG THANKYOU SOOOOOOO MUCH! U SAVED MY LIFE I LOVE YOU!

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