My entire 4K art piece glitched into a green mess right before a client review

I was putting the final touches on a big character illustration for a game studio in Austin, about 3 hours before the Zoom call. Had the file open in Photoshop with maybe 30 layers, mostly smart objects and adjustment layers. Out of nowhere, the whole canvas just turned into this solid block of neon green, like a corrupted video file. No warning, no crash, just pure digital death. I tried closing and reopening, but the autosave had caught the glitched state, so my last good version was from 2 hours prior. Had to scramble to rebuild the lighting and texture work from memory and old screenshots. Ended up presenting a slightly rougher version and explaining what happened, which they were cool about, but it felt super unprofessional. Has anyone else had a major software fail eat their work right before a deadline, and what's your backup plan now?

2 comments

2 Comments

claire_walker12d ago

I used to just rely on autosave, but now I save a new version every single time I stop to think.

piperb9312d ago

Save a new version every time you stop to think? My computer would just give up.