[Lunatique]

I was saving a painting that I've been working on(the group shot of the fantasy characters)for weeks, and it all of a sudden CRASHED. My fucking file now won't open up.

What can I do to get it back?

[Frog]

Sorry to hear about that, nothing worse than losing a few few weeks work!!! Painter does seem buggy, I remember in one of the tutorials on Seegmiller's site these funny artifacts appear in his painting at some point and he kind of brushes it off as one of Painter's little quirks...

One thing to do in the future is to save incremental versions of a painting, maybe once or twice a day, that way if your file corrupts you only lose a little. Added benefits are that if you paint yourself into a corner you can always go back to an earlier version + if you ever wanted to write a tutorial you would have the necessary files

[Pat]

I've never had a crash during a save, but they can happen. Frog's right, save incremental versions no matter what program you're using. I got stung a few months ago in Photoshop, accidently saving a 72dpi version of a file I'd worked on for days.

As for Painter specific tips: avoid saving in it's native riff file format. I've had nothing but grief with it. I always save as a tiff now --and it's been clear sailing ever since. It's also easy to switch between Painter and Photoshop as well.

What format was your file being saved as? If it was a .riff file, you're about 99.9% hosed. Once a .riff file goes south, I've never heard of a single person recovering one. If it was a .tiff file, there may be some hope. If you remember the resolution and size of the image, there's a small chance you can recover a portion of it by opening the image in Photoshop in RAW format.

-Pat

[BooMSticK]

sorry to hear that luna.
I don't remember having Painter destroying files like that. Occasionally Painter shuts down all of sudden and I have experienced that it happens more often when importing .psd files into Painter and without saving you just continue working. That has gotten Painter to crash a few times for me.

Unlike Pat I have the best experience with saving in Painters native .riff format. Don't save in .psd unless you really have to since painter saves photoshop files in a strange manner - making the files huuuuuge.

Incremental savings is your best friend. Usually I end up in the around 30 or something savings on my bigger paintings. Saving the final painting in both .psd and .riff.
,boom

[Lunatique]

Frog- I will try to do that from now on, but my files can be as big as close to 100mb, so incremental versions will take over my harddrive....

pat- I tried your suggestion of opening it as a RAW file(it was origianlly a PSD file), and I ended up with this:



In Painter, I save in PSD format, since I RIFF does weird things.

I don't know about TIFF format, since it doesn't support layers. If there's another file format that handles layers and is even more stable than PSD or RIFF, I'll gladly try it.

What happend to my file in detail: I hit ctrl + s to save, and it started saving...for about 3 fucking minutes. The damn file was only 72 mbs, and it should've been done in just a few seconds. I didn't have tons of other stuff running(only KaZaa, winamp, and windows explorer). So, it kept on saving...and saving...and saving...until I realized it's not going to stop. So, I brought up Task Manager and terminated the fucker. Now, I KNEW if I did that, I would probably end up with a corrupted file, but, letting the computer run on forever saving is not any better. So, I ended the process on Painter 7, and the rest you know already.

[Frog]

Luna: I know this is cold comfort right now, but if you go through the hassle of recreating your file from scratch it will almost certainly be better than it was before, you will have worked through a lot of problems while working on it over the last few weeks and that will definitely make a difference to your second attempt. As a friend of mine used to say: it's always easier the second time

As for large files: I think that if you reopen your painter .psd's in photoshop and save them again from there they should get a little smaller. Even so, you do have CD burner, right? If not, get one!!! You cannot expect to archive your work on a hard disk...

[Lunatique]

Frog-- Actually, whenever I try to do different versions/attempts, my original version is always better for some reason. It's alwasy been like that. . .. I can't tell you how many times I've discarded newer versions and went back to the original version and finished it from there.

I do have a burner, except I've been downloading stuff from KaZaa non-stop, and I didn't want to disconnect the threads to burn stuff. I was going to wait until I was done downloading the recent sessions before backing up.

[mythwarden]

Doh!

Sorry hear that Lun.

I remember working at Bethesda on a High Polly model for two long weeks and Max crashed on me corrupting that file while saving too. Even though I was new to the industry, I should have known better not to have multiple save files.

5-6 months ago I had my entire hard drive crash and I lost most of my previous paintings and work. My backup CD's got caught up in storage back in California and were later lost in the move.

So I can relate to you. I guess what you have to do now is download your version here on Sijun, do an increased image size on it...then work your way up again.


-myth

[Blade]

Lunatique what version of windows are you running, because I remember one time when my sister had corrupted a document she was working on and there was something i did with the recent folder, but I cant remember exactly and I cant figure it out here im at school, once i get home i can take a look on my win98 or win2000 pro depending on which one you have and see if there is any solution i can come up with, dont get your hopes up though.

[Dr. Bang]

Hey Luna, sorry to hear that, but look on the bright side. Its going to take you much lesser time to complete this painting cause you've already have everything planted out and know what you're doing. Infact, i think its gonna take you less than half of the original time. Wish you the best Luna!

[Lunatique]

Oh man, now I better make SURE this painting turns out really good, because you guys all say the new version should be better due to the "practice" on the first version.

Damn. The pressure.

Blade- I'm running 2000 pro.

mythwarden- I had a jpg version with only 50% of the original resolution, minus 3 days worth of work. I'm working my way up from that one.

[Loki]

Lunadude: I know that pain. The only advice I can give you is that one way I try to prevent things like that top happen is saving more than one file as the painting progresses. I usually end up with 5 versions for my personal stuff (and like 10-20 for professional work). Everytime I make a bigger step forward, I save another version.
So at least I have something I can fall back on and never lose more than a few hours of work if something goes wrong.

It's also helpful when sometimes I paint myself into a corner and wanna start over at an earlier point.

btw - Trying to open a .psd as a raw file won't work, because the image is stored differently. Especially when it's layered. In a raw file only three or four channels are saved - straight. A ps file is way more complicated and compressed.

[Jin]

Luna,

One thing you might try.. no guarantee.. but it might get back at least some of your work:

1. In the Objects palette's Scripts section menu, choose Open Script.

2. Highlight the Script dated the day you last worked on your painting.

3. Click the Open button.

4. In the Scripts section, click the Play button:



5. Stop the script just before the end (before your attempt to Save) by clicking the square Stop icon/button just to the left of the Play icon/button.

If that doesn't work, try playing back the Script dated the previous day.


Suggestions, some of which have already been made by other members:

In the future, don't rely on saving *only* one version, and don't rely on *only* saving to either PSD or TIFF.

PSD can't keep Painter-specific information intact.

TIFF, obviously, doesn't retain even Layers, let alone other Painter-specific information.

If you want to save other formats as well as RIFF, that's OK, but be sure to save a RIFF file.

If you're afraid the RIFF might become corrupted, first save in PSD and/or TIFF, then save in RIFF. Even though neither of these formats will keep Painter-specific information intact, at least you won't lose all of your work.

If you're saving to PSD, note that in Painter 7 there's been a problem when the file is saved with selections, causing complete loss of the file both in Photoshop and Painter. To prevent this, get rid of the selections first. Before getting rid of the selections, transfer them to a new Painter image, then save that image as a RIFF.. so the selections will be available to use later. Here's my understanding of Doug Frost's explanation of the process (edited to make the steps relevant to your situation):

1. Open a new image the same size and resolution as your painting.

2. With your Source image active (your painting), go to the Objects palette's Mask section, and highlight New Mask 1 (or whatever number it is).

3. Edit > Copy (to clipboard).

4. With the new image active (the new image where you'll save the selections), Edit > Paste.

5. Save the new image as a Painter RIFF with an appropriate name so you'll know it contains Masks/selections to use with your painting.

6. When you want to use these selections again in your painting, open your painting.

7. Open the new image that contains the selections, then go to the Objects palette's Mask section, and highlight New Mask 1 (or whatever number it is) and Edit > Copy (to clipboard).

8. With your painting active, Edit > Paste.

9. In the Objects palette's Masks section, highlight the Visibility Mask of the layer, then in the Masks section menu, choose Copy Mask (into New.. this creates a New Mask with the next available number).

10. With the New Mask highlighted, click the Load Selection icon at the bottom of the Masks section (first icon on the left), choose the appropriate New Mask from the dropdown menu, and click the OK button.

11. You can now delete the corresponding Layer, or you can reuse it to generate additional Masks.


Again, always save in Painter's native RIFF format and, to minimize the chances of having corrupted files, save them uncompressed (check the Uncompressed box when saving the file). This will make the file larger, but it's better than no file at all.

Back up your numbered series files on CD or other storage media as you work.

After working in Painter for a while, save your file, shut down Painter, then reopen it and continue.

Sometimes it's good to also reboot and give Painter a fresh start.

Do regular housekeeping (delete temp files, browser cache, and run ScanDisk and Defrag at least once a week), delete the Pre-built Brush File after each Painter session unless it's pretty small, keep your Painter 7 Default Libraries uncluttered with custom brush variants/papers/patterns, etc. Instead, organize them in custom libraries to load as needed.


Print this and refer to it when needed.

Hope it helps.

[ April 19, 2002: Message edited by: Jin ]

[Lunatique]

Jinny-- Thanks for the tips! Unfortunately, the script thing didn't work. The file itself can't even be opened at all.

Oh well, I've accepted the fact it's a goner. I've already begun repainting it from an older jpg version at 50% resolution with 3 days worth of work lost.

[AndrewMyers]

So, considering the amount of people who are starting to use painter now, compared to its much smaller user base years ago, why is it that the ONLY program that can view RIFF format images is STILL PAINTER! If I don't have Painter installed on my computer at work, I can't even LOOK at my painter images. That's rediculous. Anyone know what's up with that?

[ur0b0r0s]

The creators of Painter don't have a particularly strong track-record when it comes to listening to their own customers.
RIFF should have been killed off a long time ago IMHO.
The mere fact that nobody else has adopted it ought to be enough reason to consider dropping it altogether instead of still pushing it as Painter's "native" format.

At one time the lead programmer of our company spent hours trying to salvage something from a corrupted RIFF file of mine but since it's very difficult to get decent documentation on RIFF he didn't have much luck.

Well, just my 2 cents...

|www.edvardtoth.com|

[jesusclone]

Sorry I don't have time to read all the replies at the moment, so if I sound like an idiot.....that's part of the reason

Anyway, I had a similar problem with Pshop7 beta (yeah that's what I get for running beta software eh?). I did find this one program that did open the PSD file, It was in very rough shape mind you, and it wasn't the original size... and the Red and Blue channels were screwed....BUT THE GREEN WAS INTACT! Anyway, it gave me a good idea of what things were supposed to look like so that I could do an overpaint a lot quicker than starting over from scratch. I can check to see if this program opens RIFF (but from what other people are saying I sorta doubt it ). Currently my pc is dead though, hopefully I can get it fixed tomorrow and then I'll get back to you on that.

Hopefully you can make heads or tales of that garbled mess of words

-JC

[ewiser]

RIFF is Painters native file format just like PSD is Photoshop native file format.
The developers did not make it easy in the past for other sofeware developers to use the file format so that is why it is not on any file viewers list of file formats that can be read.

[lowpoly]

As you saved in .psd there might be a possibility to repair it, as .psd data structure should be available.

Chances are that the first part of the corrupted file is OK. You can save an empty image with same size and layer structure and compare the header with a hex editor.

I don't know .psd format specifically but often file formats like this consist of chunks. Chunks have a header and a data block. The header block stores the length and the position of the next chunk (and other data). Now with a hex editor you can jump from chunk to chunk and edit-in a terminating chunk where it seems appropriate (assuming the program crashed while writing a chunk, leaving it incomplete).

I just read that you lost about three days of work, not weeks like mentioned in the first post. I don't know if it's worth the effort then. Maybe you know a programmer who needs a challenge.

[ April 20, 2002: Message edited by: lowpoly ]

[yeshman]

were you saving to the desktop? This happened to me a couple times when I saved a file to teh desktop in painter. Doesnt really help you recover, but at least helps you prevent it in the future. I was so mad when it happened to me, I was in there with a hex editor and looking for anyone with the file format specs to help me out, no luck. Far as I can tell RiFF is completely propriatary.

[Golongria]

If you're running Windows XP, you can go to:
-Start
-All Programs
-Accessories
-System Tools
-System Restore
Then restore your computer to the day before the file got jacked, it should revert it back to how it was, and doing this doesn't get rid of any new downloads you've done. Hope this works

[Lunatique]

I'll be in Hong Kong for the next 4 days, so I'll have to try these new suggestions out when I get back home. Thanks.