PDA

View Full Version : Help-- corrupted Photoshop files!!



chris jordan
13-Jul-2004, 10:01
Hey guys, I’m desperately in need of some sophisticated technical Photoshop/Mac help. Last night I discovered that four of my image files have corrupted on my hard drive. These are files that took me more than 40 hours each of work each. I went to my six backup drives and to my horror I found that the files are corrupted on those drives also-- somehow the corruption makes it past the “verify” function of both Silverfast and Retrospect, so I have backed up the corrupted files (and copied over the good versions in the process).

I ran Norton Disk Doctor on the drive and it found no problems. The files don’t open in Photoshop-- they get all the way to the end (within a second or two of opening) and I get an error message saying there’s a disk error. A “get info” check shows that the files are still on the drive-- they are taking up the right amount of room on the drive, and the Photoshop icon is still there. I tried copying the files to a new folder and the same thing happens-- the progress bar makes it all the way to the end, and then a second or two before it should complete, it gives a disk error message.

I tried copying the corrupted file to a blank disk drive and doing a Norton Unerase, and it created a new file that it said was successful, and when I tried opening that one the same thing happened again-- it got to about 99% of the way to open, and then I got an error message saying the file could not be opened because the “color book” was missing.

Does anyone know how I can save these files? Is there a way to open the file without a “color book”, or somehow insert one, or fool Photoshop into thinking it’s there? I already tried turning off all color management in Photoshop and that didn’t help. I also tried renaming the files, and their folders, rebooting numerous times, and doing desktop rebuilds, all to no avail.

Oh, and I'm on PS 7, Mac 9.2.2.

Any help would be massively appreciated.

Ralph Barker
13-Jul-2004, 10:41
I'm not a Mac person, Chris, but it sounds like all of the operations you've been trying all relate to use of the original file, which is now corrupted. If the backups over-wrote the original good files on the alternate drive with the corrupted version, I'm not sure there is much that can be done, unless the backup system includes some form of journaling and version control, as is available with some RAID systems.

My suggestion would be to talk to Adobe tech support to see if they might have a utility that would allow you to determine the nature of the corruption, and fix it. UNIX systems, for example, have low-level utilities that enable you to twiddle individual bits on the disk (assuming you know what you're doing, of course). If Adobe has such a utility for Photoshop files, it would still likely result in some data loss, such as truncating part of the image, however.

Paul Schilliger
13-Jul-2004, 10:56
My only experience with corrupt files was due to a defective RAM years ago. I regularly had messages that the file was corrupt and discovered with some horror color strikes across the images. It took me weeks before I had the idea of checking up my RAM which I did with GURU, a free shareware. I had it replaced and have had no errors since, only freezes and non destructive errors due to full disks or old SCSI links. I don't have a link right now, but if you can't find it I will mail you a copy.

Henry Suryo
13-Jul-2004, 10:57
Chris, I don't really know if there's a way to restore already corrupted files. I had a similar experience with Photoshop, not just on PSD files but TIFFs and JPEGs and found the culprit to be Norton Anti Virus program. If have this program enabled, you may want to disable it before you do any kind of saving. Hope this helps, good luck, Henry

Paul Schilliger
13-Jul-2004, 11:17
If it is not too advanced, try running Norton unerase on your backup disks to see if by chance some of the previous versions can still be retrived. Good luck!

Bruce Watson
13-Jul-2004, 11:40
In your place, I would absolutely call Adobe tech. support and ask them. They have likely seen this before. Make sure you go above the first level of tech support if the first level can't help you. Be persistent. You might also consider the hard drive recovery services. They may be able to fully recover the file as they have more advanced tools that the OS comes with. But don't get your hopes up. It sounds like you've had one or more bits (magnetic dipoles) flip. So the file is fine, but the data it contains is not. Yech.

In the future, consider a multistep workflow. That is, save a file for every step of your workflow. I usually end up with at least five tif files, including the original scan, the crop-input sharpen-spot version, versions for various corrections as needed, and a final output version. More files if local contrast, color corrections, or special effects are needed. This way if something changes - say the inks, or the paper, or the printer, or my mind, or the output file is corrupted, etc., I can drop back to the appropriate file and only rebuild the image as much as is needed.

I store all files uncompressed. What I remember (and I may well be wrong as it's been years since I researched this) is that LZ compression depends on all the bits being perfect. A one-bit error can render the compressed file unreadable. Sadly, most PC/MAC file systems and utilities eschew CRC algorithms, so one-bit errors are actually likely in a 550MB file.

I'm working with large files - about 550MB, 16bit grayscale. All the files for a particular image fit on a DVD ROM, and I store one image per DVD. It's not a perfect system. But it's the best I've come up with so far. I am, of course, open to suggestions. And, of course, YMMV.

Good luck, and please let us know what you find out.

tim atherton
13-Jul-2004, 12:13
Chris are these PSD files?

I know there are several image fiel recover utitlities out there (mainly for the digital camerra crowd) but one of them might do the trick. And a couple seem to be specifically for PSD files. A colleague also had a whole bunch disappear from her hardrive and found a utility that sorted them out.

I'll aska round

tim

Larry Gebhardt
13-Jul-2004, 13:22
If it happens with 6 files it could be an issue with photoshop and not the files. Do you have a backup computer to test it out on - maybe one running CS? If this works did you install any thing else on the system? Are you out of space on the scratch disk?

Jeff_1630
13-Jul-2004, 15:15
Chris,

Try running a batch process to open and rename the files as Ttiffs or something other than what they are. PS may be able to do that without opening the file all the way. You can then try to open them in PS or another program (you can download picture window pro for free and see if it can open them). And yes, get on the phone to Adobe.

QT Luong
13-Jul-2004, 15:40
You can also try to read the files on a different OS or with a different application and then rewrite them using that OS/application. A couple of months ago I ran on exactly the same problem on Photoshop/Mac OS X. I was able to read the files on Photoshop/Windows XP. The resaved files were OK on the Mac. If you don't have a PC available, see if you can read and rewrite the files with a different application than Photoshop.

Frank Petronio
13-Jul-2004, 20:40
Sorry Chris,

In the future, avoid all Symantec products, especially using the "full install." They are the root of many evil gremlins. Stick to Alsoft Disk Warrior and Apple's Hard Disk Utility - they are all you need. Use a Firewall or non-Symantec Anti-Virus if you must, but generally you simply don't need or want them. Norton's has an especially bad reputation amongst ad agencies, design studios, etc.

Your problem may hopefully have to do with a corrupted Photoshop application, especially since your back up copies are unreadable. The other more likely possibility is a failing hard disk (the original one that you were using when you first wrote the file) that might be missing a beat from "stickion." Check your other files made after these - you may be able to save smaller files OK, but when it has to save a larger file, something in the drive goes wrong during the writing.

Try opening the files on another PC. Otherwise, I think you are SOOL. You might try a drive recovery service but they are very expensive ($800 plus).

For future use, it is time to consider replacing the hard drive with a new one. The quality control and reliablity of hard drives has gotten worse, and getting only 2-3 years out of one is not uncommon. You could get two new drives and set up a RAID for even more security.

Keith S. Walklet
13-Jul-2004, 22:16
Chris, this doesn't seem to be a duplicate of your problem, but the file behavior is similar to what I experienced.

FWIW, I twice lost entire Firewire drives of data after upgrading to OSX. I finally traced the problem to the OS9/X relationship. Since many of my applications were still in OS9, I was often operating in Classic Mode or launching OS9 as the start-up disk.

As it turns out, the file storage hierarchy in OS9 and X didn't jive (manuals warn against moving/opening/deleting files created in X in 9 and vice versa).

After twice directing my anger at the "dead drive" manufacturers (thinking incompatibility problems with my G4), I realized the problem was that I hadn't been ejecting the drives when shifting back and forth between OS's, and when I got the "file corrupted" message and the drive icon disappeared a third time, I retraced my steps. I launched OS9, found the drives, ejected them, quit OS9, launched X and mounted the drives. Everything was once again the way it was supposed to be.

That didn't bring back the 200gbs of data I lost in my first two episodes, but I gave my best effort at a making lemonade from lemons by rationalizing that I my Photoshop skills had improved so much since I'd made my earliest digital work, that it was worth revisiting the images anyway. ...sigh, it is still time I'd like back.

Janko Belaj
14-Jul-2004, 06:21
Chris, sad story to read, but there may be a solution... I'm experienced in solving such problems (as I have lost and recovered few files too) but unfortunately can't help you on distance. And my clumsy english is stoping me from describing what am I doing in such situations.
How ever, there are few tools and one more step to chose: I would first try with DiskWarior (great tool, much better than NUM), second, I will try with FileBudy and BBEdit... Yes, BBEdit (the best text editor)... I was able to open file and recover lost headers so file system (including Photoshop as an ordinary "Image File Reader") can recognize my document.
And one step more, try to find MUG (Macintosh User Group) near your home apple.com/usergroups/find (http://www.apple.com/usergroups/find/" target="blank), those folk now to be the best support you can find for Mac (I'm vice president of one small group, but I'm afraid to far from you)... Maybe you will have to pay small amount in name of yearly membership, but we usually help anyone in big trouble nomather is he/she our member or not (doesn't apply for firms, of course!).

Janko

JohnnyV
14-Jul-2004, 08:19
Chris,

As mentioned try opening in a different app like Adobe Illustrator, Image Ready or Indesign. Also try opening in Apple's Preview app. Try shareware program GraphicConverter too.

If that doesn't work post to Photoshop forums at http://www.adobeforums.com/ as a number of Photoshop engineers monitor the list and could help you out.

John V

JohnnyV
14-Jul-2004, 09:08
Also I just came across this software called "MediaRECOVER" to recover images on any media - for Mac and Windows:

http://www.mediarecover.com/software.html

ronald moravec
14-Jul-2004, 11:07
I dropped a box of negatives some time ago. I just put them back in.

Michael Chmilar
15-Jul-2004, 15:26
Definitely try reading the files on a different computer.

Luke_4418
15-Jul-2004, 20:55
Is it all or just some of the files that cant be read? Sometimes its the photoshop preferences that gets corrupted and you just have to nuke them. To do this, just hold down ctr+alt+shift (on the PC) just after you've clicked the shortcut to open photoshop, it should give you a message about deleting the preference file. After this you'll have to reset all your preferences, but its very useful in some situations. Good luck!!

timpane
28-Sep-2011, 03:21
The corrupted photoshop files can be easily repaired with third party Photoshop PSD repair (http://www.photoshoppsdrepair.com) tool. It repairs and restores corrupt files in very short time and effectively.

Lenny Eiger
28-Sep-2011, 09:46
This used to happen to me once in a while. The repair utilities sound promising, but the other thing is to upgrade your computer and anything over 700mb go to large document format..... I haven't had anything get corrupted since the days of PS7..

Lenny

taulen
28-Sep-2011, 09:55
This have to be the "longest"(?) bump I have ever seen. Well over 7years. Impressive. And yes, have to agree with Lenny, havent had a corrupt PSD file in many years.

Lenny Eiger
30-Sep-2011, 17:00
This have to be the "longest"(?) bump I have ever seen. Well over 7years. Impressive. And yes, have to agree with Lenny, havent had a corrupt PSD file in many years.

I feel like an idiot. I have to check these things more carefully... arrgh.

Lenny