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

Jennifer Kim · 2026-03-15T03:50:15.554522+00:00

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?

the_lisa6mo 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.

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davidwright7mo 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.

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oliverw467mo 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.

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