Horror of horrors!!! I just renamed a photo I was working on "Final2" and of course got the question that another file exists with that name do you want to replace it? I wa multi tasking at the time and pressed OK knowing that's not what I wanted to do and BAM my other picture is gone. Is there anyway to get it back. I was working with it for several hours in Photoshop and now all my work will be lost if not able to recover it. Any help out there for me?

bcarll

Well if you have a Mac and leopard you could recover some of it with time machine. But there are other ways to restore deleted files. Its still on the hard drive. Don't do a lot of file changing until you can find a why to undelete your photo.

Barcall.. as Phil says, dont do a lot of writing to your hard drive and pick up an undelete program. I use File Salvage on my Mac.

Thanks ---- this was a picture restoration I had spent several hours on. I can do it over but I was so pleased with my results the first run through. Will look into what you all have suggested and not add to my HD until I find out what I need to do. A great lesson to be learned here isn't there? Pay attention!! How dumb of me and so unlike me to delete a file without thinking. But thanks for giving some hope! I don't have a MAC. Windows with XP home eddition.

bcarll

hi,
time is of the essence.... the longer you wait to try to recover the less possibly you'll get a full recover... in addition..... the installing a unerase software may even prevent your from full recovery but you may no choice but to risk it......
basically you need a unerase/undelete program there many....
this is one...
http://www.recuva.com/
here another one, what nice about this one is that it can be run from a floppy.... http://www.aumha.org/a/recover.php
here another. again it doesn't have to be installed can be run from cd or floppy... ... http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,23108-page,1-c,filemanagement/description.html

good luck on recovering....





Thanks ---- this was a picture restoration I had spent several hours on. I can do it over but I was so pleased with my results the first run through. Will look into what you all have suggested and not add to my HD until I find out what I need to do. A great lesson to be learned here isn't there? Pay attention!! How dumb of me and so unlike me to delete a file without thinking. But thanks for giving some hope! I don't have a MAC. Windows with XP home eddition.

bcarll

bcarll,
When you replace a file under Windows XP the file location is overwritten. While threre are some sophisticated high dollar programs that can separate previous magnetic signatures from new ones on the hard drive, they are not off the shelf packages. Their price is also way out there.

If you want to try an unerase utility, make sure you read about it carefully. They vary a lot. You will also run across many Web based utilities that claim they can recover anything... and maybe they can. But they are costly as well, with a sliding cost based upon what they do and how long it takes. So beware !

Unfortunately, unless you are willing to spend a bundle, the file is likely lost.

Unfortunately, TommyO's comments are correct. I don't know about the mac, but if you are on a PC, then it most likely has been overwritten, in which case it is gone. If you had simply deleted it, you could possibly recover it, since deleting only marks the file space as available for use, but does not actually delete the file. Since you saved a new file, Windows has a nasty habit of reusing at least part of the same storage space that was previously used.

I'm just making a crazy stab in the dark here and could be just puffin' muffins but, photoshop's scratch disk- is it completely purged/wiped after each session? If you had the lost file open recently would it be possible to retrieve something usable from the scratch?

Unfortunately most of you are right. If I had just deleted the photo I could possibly retrieve it. However the overwriting of it has it gone for ever I fear. Thanks to everyone who has tried to help me undelete my mistake. Oh how I would like to have that one second back. Well it was only around 2 hours of work and at that a labor of love. I think you all have done one or two of those jobs. I truly appreciate how quicklly you all came to my rescue. Another reason why this is such a great forum to be involved in. Thanks again!!

bcarll

this is also why i always leave auto-save turned on. it's annoying as hell, but saves some pain at times.

also, since this isnt really restoration problem in the sense of doing image touch up restoration (yes, i know it's another type of restoration, but that's for a different forum), i'm moving this thread.

hi,
yourquite welcome and too bad.... just a thought for the future...
I think it would be a good idea, a little insurance, to have a undelete/unerase programs readily avail...
that way if you ever need it it avail and you can quickly recover if possible...

and some of these programs don't have to be installed on the hard drive... just be on a diskett or cd......

Unfortunately most of you are right. If I had just deleted the photo I could possibly retrieve it. However the overwriting of it has it gone for ever I fear. Thanks to everyone who has tried to help me undelete my mistake. Oh how I would like to have that one second back. Well it was only around 2 hours of work and at that a labor of love. I think you all have done one or two of those jobs. I truly appreciate how quicklly you all came to my rescue. Another reason why this is such a great forum to be involved in. Thanks again!!

bcarll

Something you might try, just run a search with search assistant for that file name. If it's anywhere hiding on a drive that will find it. Another thought is sometimes I forget that I have Photoshop keep a file on all my edits. If you do too then at least you would have a record of every move you made in retouching the photo the first time.