Destiny Bottino writes:

Hello,
I was recently working on a big project of mine using GIMP. I had spent 5 hours straight working on it, saving it every 5 minutes, and then GIMP crashed and lost everything but a few layers. This was not a saving issue because the layers that stayed were made at completely different times. I lost pretty much all my work and I am furious. I don't have time to do it all over again. I'm pretty sure there is no way of bringing it back. GIMP is a wonderful drawing program and I use it all the time, but this was just too overboard for me. It crashes almost everytime I use it but all those other times, everything was saved alright and everything was fine. This time one of my best drawings was lost and there is no way of bringing it back (trust me, I've tried everything). I am letting you know because I don't want this to happen to anyone else and (even though I am certain nothing can fix it) is there anyway to bring my drawing back? I put my best work into it and it makes me furious that its gone. Please, if anyone knows how to bring it back, please help me. This drawing meant a lot to me.

You might want to upload the xcf somewhere if you want people to help with trying to get it back.

Howver, being able to keep a few layers (as opposed to completely losing the whole file) does sound very odd (your harddrive isn't making strange ticking noises, is it?).

In any case, if you're getting a lot of crashes, do ensure you're running the newest version (click Help→About, should say 2.6.11). You might also want to invest in some more RAM (I've got 3GB, haven't had a GIMP crash in over a year).

best regards, -Kevin

On Tue, 29 Nov 2011 14:34:11 +0100 Kevin Brubeck Unhammer wrote:

Destiny Bottino writes:

Hello,
I was recently working on a big project of mine using GIMP. I had spent 5 hours straight working on it, saving it every 5 minutes, and then GIMP crashed and lost everything but a few layers. This was not a saving issue because the layers that stayed were made at completely different times. I lost pretty much all my work and I am furious. I don't have time to do it all over again. I'm pretty sure there is no way of bringing it back. GIMP is a wonderful drawing program and I use it all the time, but this was just too overboard for me. It crashes almost everytime I use it but all those other times, everything was saved alright and everything was fine. This time one of my best drawings was lost and there is no way of bringing it back (trust me, I've tried everything). I am letting you know because I don't want this to happen to anyone else and (even though I am certain nothing can fix it) is there anyway to bring my drawing back? I put my best work into it and it makes me furious that its gone. Please, if anyone knows how to bring it back, please help me. This drawing meant a lot to me.

You might want to upload the xcf somewhere if you want people to help with trying to get it back.

Howver, being able to keep a few layers (as opposed to completely losing the whole file) does sound very odd (your harddrive isn't making strange ticking noises, is it?).

In any case, if you're getting a lot of crashes, do ensure you're running the newest version (click Help___About, should say 2.6.11). You might also want to invest in some more RAM (I've got 3GB, haven't had a GIMP crash in over a year).

best regards, -Kevin

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Destiny, what OS are you running? What version of Gimp? How much RAM? How old is your main hard disk drive? (I run two HDs, and replace the oldest every 3 years or so.)

On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 6:16 PM, Destiny Bottino wrote:

I was recently working on a big project of mine using GIMP. I had spent 5 hours straight working on it, saving it every 5 minutes

Personally, after a couple of hours or so of work (in any graphics program), I usually do a File->Save As and append a number to the filename. So if I start a project, I'll save it as something like "my_project_01.xcf", then after a while save as "my_project_02.xcf" - that way even if I close or crash GIMP I have a series of 'snapshots' of the project I can go back to if needed. This has saved me from disaster more than once - I've seen everything from lightning strikes to pets eating power cords, not to mention pilot error ;)

OTOH, I hardly ever crash GIMP - you definitely should try and track down the cause of those crashes also.

Chris

On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 4:06 PM, Chris Mohler wrote:

Personally, after a couple of hours or so of work (in any graphics program), I usually do a File->Save As and append a number to the filename.  So if I start a project, I'll save it as something like "my_project_01.xcf", then after a while save as "my_project_02.xcf" - that way even if I close or crash GIMP I have a series of 'snapshots' of the project I can go back to if needed.  This has saved me from disaster more than once - I've seen everything from lightning strikes to pets eating power cords, not to mention pilot error ;)

Hah! That reminds me of the typical workflow for Photoshop 4 (anyone remember 1998?). It only had a single undo level, so you had to save like that after every single edit if you wanted to be able to go back a reasonable number of steps.

I'd say the workflow you describe is probably one of the best ones to adopt when working on any large graphic project. That's how all the employees (including myself) did it when I worked for a multimedia company, and it saved my ass more than once.

-- Frank Gore
www.ProjectPontiac.com

May I add that it is also a good idea to shut Gimp down and re-open that latest file. This ensures that the project has been saved properly and can be read.

Paranoid? Who? Me?!

Kev

On Tue November 29 2011 15:06:33 Chris Mohler wrote:

On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 6:16 PM, Destiny Bottino wrote:

I was recently working on a big project of mine using GIMP. I had spent 5
hours straight working on it, saving it every 5 minutes

Personally, after a couple of hours or so of work (in any graphics program), I usually do a File->Save As and append a number to the filename. So if I start a project, I'll save it as something like "my_project_01.xcf", then after a while save as "my_project_02.xcf" - that way even if I close or crash GIMP I have a series of 'snapshots' of the project I can go back to if needed. This has saved me from disaster more than once - I've seen everything from lightning strikes to pets eating power cords, not to mention pilot error ;)

OTOH, I hardly ever crash GIMP - you definitely should try and track down the cause of those crashes also.

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On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 3:16 PM, Frank Gore wrote:

Hah! That reminds me of the typical workflow for Photoshop 4 (anyone remember 1998?). It only had a single undo level, so you had to save like that after every single edit if you wanted to be able to go back a reasonable number of steps.

Or how about when PS would crap out on the undo saying "scratch disk is full", so you didn't even have the *one* undo? Ah yes, fond memories... ;)

Hell, these days I 'Save As' an increment on every client revision (not every edit though - no PS4 for me thanks), no matter how trivial. Disk space is cheap - time and effort are not.

Chris

On 11/29/2011 3:16 PM, Frank Gore wrote:

On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 4:06 PM, Chris Mohler wrote:

Personally, after a couple of hours or so of work (in any graphics program), I usually do a File->Save As and append a number to the filename. So if I start a project, I'll save it as something like "my_project_01.xcf", then after a while save as "my_project_02.xcf" - that way even if I close or crash GIMP I have a series of 'snapshots' of the project I can go back to if needed.

I'd say the workflow you describe is probably one of the best ones to adopt when working on any large graphic project. That's how all the employees (including myself) did it when I worked for a multimedia company, and it saved my ass more than once.

It is possible to write a python-fu versioning system, right? I've yet to do anything with python-fu so I'm not sure.

-Stefan

Stefan Maerz wrote,

[..]

It is possible to write a python-fu versioning system, right? I've yet to do anything with python-fu so I'm not sure.

-Stefan

I've never used it, but look at:
http://registry.gimp.org/node/14246

"It will save a backup copy of your active image as [imagename]-YYYY-MM-DD-HH-MM.xcfgz in the same directory as your active image."

Just an idea - would it be possible to recover such lost/damaged file from /swap?
If security maniacs sugest us to encrypt /swap maybe there is some way to recover data just from this place? Under M$ XP i used to recover lots of data just by searching strings containing parts of such damaged file through whole filesystem. Lots of lost saves was stored as temporary files somewhere in C: ...

2011/11/30, Bob Long :

Stefan Maerz wrote,

[..]

It is possible to write a python-fu versioning system, right? I've yet to do anything with python-fu so I'm not sure.

-Stefan

I've never used it, but look at:
http://registry.gimp.org/node/14246

"It will save a backup copy of your active image as [imagename]-YYYY-MM-DD-HH-MM.xcfgz in the same directory as your active image."

--
Bob Long

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Bob Long writes:

Stefan Maerz wrote,

[..]

It is possible to write a python-fu versioning system, right? I've yet to do anything with python-fu so I'm not sure.

-Stefan

I've never used it, but look at:
http://registry.gimp.org/node/14246

"It will save a backup copy of your active image as [imagename]-YYYY-MM-DD-HH-MM.xcfgz in the same directory as your active image."

Just tried it, it works great :)

Note: if you do two backups within one minute, only the last one will be saved. That's not really a bug though ;)

-Kevin

On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 4:12 AM, Kevin Brubeck Unhammer wrote:

Bob Long writes:

Stefan Maerz wrote,

[..]

It is possible to write a python-fu versioning system, right? I've yet to do anything with python-fu so I'm not sure.

-Stefan

I've never used it, but look at:
http://registry.gimp.org/node/14246

"It will save a backup copy of your active image as [imagename]-YYYY-MM-DD-HH-MM.xcfgz in the same directory as your active image."

Just tried it, it works great :)

Note: if you do two backups within one minute, only the last one will be saved. That's not really a bug though ;)

Would you like it to not overwrite? I can change it fairly easily, by extending the naming convention to add seconds :)

I created it for just this reason, so I'm glad someone else will get some use from it...

FYI there are also two times based alternatives: perl autosave: http://registry.gimp.org/node/20875 python autosave:
http://www.mail-archive.com/gimp-developer@lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/msg18118.html

but I have never used either...

-Rob A>

Rob Antonishen writes:

On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 4:12 AM, Kevin Brubeck Unhammer wrote:

Bob Long writes:
> Stefan Maerz wrote,
>
> [..]
>
>> It is possible to write a python-fu versioning system, right? I've yet >> to do anything with python-fu so I'm not sure. >>
>> -Stefan
>
> I've never used it, but look at: > http://registry.gimp.org/node/14246 >
> "It will save a backup copy of your active image as > [imagename]-YYYY-MM-DD-HH-MM.xcfgz in the same directory as your > active image."

Just tried it, it works great :)
Note: if you do two backups within one minute, only the last one will be saved. That's not really a bug though ;)

Would you like it to not overwrite?  I can change it fairly easily, by extending the naming convention to add seconds :)

For me it's sufficient, but perhaps others make more frequent backups? I just noticed because I was purposely testing for it.

-Kevin

This thread brings back such memories. I used to work in graphics making the phone book and we used Canvas and Photoshop on 486DX, not even pentium, PCs! Talk about slow! I can remember actually remaking bitmaps from old files etc, taking parts out or adding, etc, by hand, pixel by pixel. I used to joke about how I was "going in", to a place where I could no longer be reached, like at 1000+ percent zoom or whatever.

The other day I tried to open (on my present laptop) some images in gimp, real big ones from my digital camera. Mistakenly I tried 48 of them at once. It got to about
processing 16 of them, none open yet, before I shut it off. Just like the old days!!!
:)

Dan

On 12/1/11, Kevin Brubeck Unhammer wrote:

Rob Antonishen writes:

On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 4:12 AM, Kevin Brubeck Unhammer wrote:

Bob Long writes:

> Stefan Maerz wrote, >
> [..]
>
>> It is possible to write a python-fu versioning system, right? I've yet
>> to do anything with python-fu so I'm not sure. >>
>> -Stefan
>
> I've never used it, but look at: > http://registry.gimp.org/node/14246 >
> "It will save a backup copy of your active image as > [imagename]-YYYY-MM-DD-HH-MM.xcfgz in the same directory as your > active image."

Just tried it, it works great :)

Note: if you do two backups within one minute, only the last one will be
saved. That's not really a bug though ;)

Would you like it to not overwrite? I can change it fairly easily, by extending the
naming convention to add seconds :)

For me it's sufficient, but perhaps others make more frequent backups? I just noticed because I was purposely testing for it.

-Kevin

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