Why is Photoshop stupid sometimes?
polycounter lvl 11
I'm working on a Diffuse map. I save it, filename_d.png. Then I take my diffuse map, work on it a bit, create a displacement map. Save as filename_displace.png. I notice something I forgot to fix, I fix it, Save my file. Logically, I just saved the currently open file as filename_displace.png, but it still thinks that my current document is filename_d.png, so when I do a simple Save command it overwrites my Diffuse file.
This happens sometimes, but not others. Does anybody know the rhyme or reason to why photoshop opts in and out of overwriting my work? It's a really stupid way to overwrite hours of work, and I'm getting a little tired of it.
This happens sometimes, but not others. Does anybody know the rhyme or reason to why photoshop opts in and out of overwriting my work? It's a really stupid way to overwrite hours of work, and I'm getting a little tired of it.
Replies
I know this is not the exact behavior you are experiencing, tho...
I'll do some experimenting and see if that's the cause. Thanks.
Does anybody know what this "feature" is called, or if I can turn it off? I don't see anything in the File Handling preferences.
very simple just made a action that copys the image merged to a new doc and saves and closes that
Hell yea, is what I do too.
Paying more attention never hurt anybody, for sure. Still, multiple behaviors for the same file type without an error or warning message on one instance or the other seems kind of silly. Since Pior's post, I've been paying more attention to what file I'm in when working with Alpha images, and that's helped a bit. Just knowing WHEN to pay more attention has helped.
That's an interesting idea. Frustrating that you'd have to do that with PNG's, but not with PSD's, so remapping the key isn't necessarily what you'd want either.
VTools, interesting. I use qSave when working on large assets, and combined a few save settings into a series of actions using Groups ("select group 'N', save as 'filename_normal.png' "), but haven't bothered with it for shorter projects. I'll look into VTools and see what that'd do for me.
Thanks for the advice!
My limitation is that I can write Actions but don't know the syntax of Scripts, so adding logic to a save command is a bit beyond me. I agree though, it's easy enough to distinguish on paper.
Another thing I noticed is that if you open a PNG with alpha, you can modify and resave it without error; the name only changes if you save a flattened version. I think another easy workaround is saving and reopening the files if I'm planning on modifying them.
They have to be uncompressed and loaded into memory, or re-compressed as .DDS to work at all, so really, if you just want to save disk space skip it all and go straight to .DDS.
And possibly have them write a TGA to PNG converter that fits in your pipeline ?
What a pain that was, we still run into problems every once in a while. Max saves PNG's differently than Photoshop or After Effects and other image applications like xnview. Batch rename using xnview? Oh guess what all of your PNG's are hosed. Some programs let you tweak the settings so you can get similar results, while others just won't let you. Which leads to crazy convoluted work arounds to get it resaved in a format that works, hoping that the image wasn't drastically altered by the process, which it probably was...
We went from having a smooth, stable and predictable workflow that was simple, to a chaotic nightmare that relies on a lot of custom tools and hookey rituals to get similar-ish results. We still hit speed bumps and it's been 4 years since we switched. Artists raised a lot of hell over the issue and it's still a sore subject with a lot of them. Our tech guys are very sorry for the mess it caused but everyone understands how necessary it was. In our rare case, the benefits outweigh the headaches.
For us the cost of shuttling around, storing and processing all of those TGA's made it necessary for us to switch. But for other studios that aren't pushing around 50gb+ of raw TGA's, per user, every few min, I think it's stupid to work in PNG's. They better have a better reason other than "I dunno, we had to pick a format. Deal with it." At that point your headache should become their headache that is constant, persistent, never going to go away, until they fix it.
Not really. What people are saying is that PNG's aren't all that reliable and using another format is probably a better idea. Also if he has to use PNG's then finding a workflow can be difficult but not impossible. That doesn't mean he has to get rid of photoshop but maybe work in a slightly different way.
1) PNG's are unpredictable.
Based on what I know, there are a few different ways to generate a PNG and this variance can cause a lot of problems. It can be like trying to find a mechanic to fix your odd brand car. Every mechanic will say they can work on it but very few will do it well.
2) PNG is a gamble between applications.
It's like playing the telephone game. How photoshop deals with the transparency and PNG compression in general could be different than the software that originally authored the image. Just opening an image in photoshop and saving it will more than likely alter it. Which might be different than the final software that accepts the image or whatever middleware the image has to pass through. All of that unpredictability makes PNG's unreliable garbage.
2) PNG's are a compressed format.
Most games further compress whatever image is imported, so further compressing an already compressed image often leads to garbage results. It's better to feed the game engine uncompressed data like TGA.
3) The way photoshop saves is logical but annoying.
If you want the default name to change when you save to a format with lesser features you need to collapse your layers, save and then undo to get your layers back. So while that is annoying it's still far better than the other options out there.