I’ve been working on another site of mine (Qeoz) for the past few days. The site like almost all of my websites is very graphical, meaning its very stylish and graphics make up most of it. So the main layout is basically one Photoshop file.

After spending hour and hours working on the design, I some how managed to flatten the Photoshop file (merge all layers, which removes any ability at all to really edit the design), chop half of the image off, and then save over the original, and closed the image, which removes the ability to undo the history. I didn’t notice any of this happen until i reopened the image seconds later.

So then i went through this hectic stage, and some disbelief that i actually had just done that. I could’ve redesigned the layout, and possibly made it a little better, but i had already spent hours and hours on it, and thought it looked good already,  I searched all over for the Photoshop temp folder. Sure it creates a temp folder of everything you had open in Photoshop during that session. I couldn’t find any individual temp files for the files i had opened, but i found one huge file called “Photoshop Temp49707814660”, which was almost 400mb in file size.

I figured it’d have all those temp files within it. So i started searching around the web for ways to extract the contents from that, and found absolutely nothing. I don’t know about everyone else, but I think google is crap and gives me alot of random results most of the time.

So that was a no go.  I then decided to find way to scan all of the recently deleted files on my computer. I figured this would find the temp files that Photoshop creates sometimes. SO i downloaded a program called “Recover My Files” and begin scanning the hard drives on my computer.

I didn’t find any temp files, but what i found was an actual solid copy the Photoshop file itself, that was saved hours earlier in the day. I was super shocked, happy, and excited!

click image to view full picture

I didn’t know this, but i guess when Windows saves a file, it must delete the older copy of the file, and replace it. Because i hadn’t ever deleted the original Photoshop file, and yet a whole copy of it was deleted, and the program was able to pick it up. Weird. I’m not too sure how that works, but I’m super excited that i got the file back.

So basically i guess I’m posting this so others will know that there is a way to recover files if you had messed up, and saved over the original. The original un messed up file could still be on your system! of course this will only work if you scan for it soon after its deleted, or accidentally saved over, because of the way Windows writes over the deleted data.

I am still so happy that I was able to recover the file. HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY.
By the way, if you’re into music, check out my new site at 
-site deleted – Also if you were a fan of the old design and feel that I had on the old MJ site i used to one, you will love Qeoz. Continuing that style!

** 6/19/2010 9:23am : removed Qeoz links. Decided to use a different domain. Testing the new layout for use at damnidunno