PSA: My whole art project got corrupted after a power flicker last night

I was working on a big piece in Procreate, about 8 hours into it, when the lights in my apartment blinked off and on for a second. My iPad was plugged in, so I thought it was fine. When I opened the file again, it was just a blank canvas. The 40+ layers were gone. I tried the 'backup to iCloud' file, but it was from two days ago and missing all my recent work. I spent the next hour trying every recovery trick I found online, but nothing brought it back. It was for a client piece due Friday, so now I'm starting over from scratch. Has anyone found a good, automatic backup method that actually saves your work as you go?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_lisa3d ago

Honestly, I've never trusted those auto-save features to actually work right. I just make it a rule to export a full copy to my computer after every major change, like finishing a character or background. It's an extra step, but having that PSD file saved locally feels way more solid than hoping an app does its job.

davidwright1mo ago

Man, my buddy had that happen with his graphic novel pages. He does what @oliverw46 said now with the timed saves, but also just hits the duplicate button in Procreate like a nervous tic every ten minutes. Saved his butt last month.

oliverw461mo ago

Ugh, that's the worst feeling. Did you have the timed backup setting turned on in Procreate? I set mine to save every 5 minutes after I lost a sketch to a dead battery. It's saved me a few times, but I still forget to turn it on for new projects sometimes.