Workflow to prevent stupid save/save as mistake

[dbump]

I just made a stupid mistake that I'd like to avoid in the future:
I layered 5 separate photos of a group, and then created layer masks on each, and erased on successive layers to get rid of blinking/non-smiling faces, etc. Worked great. I saved that, with all of the layers, so that I could come back to it in the future if I wanted to.

Then, I wanted to save a jpg and upload to flickr, so I merged visible, made some minor edits, and went to choose Save As..., intending to choose jpg, but instead, I mis-clicked the menu item right above, which was Save. Boom. Original copy with layers is gone--no undo, no going back.
Not a huge deal, in this case. I can recreate it if I ever need, but really annoying, and it could have been worse.

What is your workflow for going from a working, fully layered image to a flattened jpg? Any suggestions on a simple way to avoid this kind of thing? Obviously, I've been burned, so I will be more careful, but that alone is not sufficient, imho.

[davidcrebelxt]

Before actual working on image, try getting in the habit of IMMEDIATELY making a copy and working on that copy rather than the original. - perhaps even renaming like IMG_2345-copy.jpg to help keep you straight.

[mr_e]

I usually save instantly as something else also

I'm surprised you couldn't go back using the history window, that's saved me a couple times, you can increase the amount of steps it saves too

[Damo77]

+1 for History. It's saved my hide more than once.

[tim]

In your case you could've "saved as" PSD, then gone into the history and gone back to the original file. Since I shoot RAW I can't overwrite the original.

[bbulldog]

It wouldnt have mattered if he made a copy before hand, he/she overwrote the layered copy he/she was working on.


I too am surprised the history could not go back.

[dbump]

Unfortunately, the 'minor edits' I'd made were roughly 19 brush strokes on a multiply layer to darken a few over exposed highlights. So I imagine history could have saved me, but it was just beyond the horizon of 20 changes.

As BBulldog points out, the layers would have been lost regardless. I was working from DNG, so my originals are fine, it's the working copy that was lost.

The only workaround I've come up with is to save the file with layers as Filename.tiff, and then, prior to making any more modifications,choose Save As and change the name to FilenameTemp.tiff, and then do destructive flattening, etc. However, since at that point, I'm still in 16 bit, I can't save as FilenameTemp.jpg, so I'll end up with an orphaned, duplicate (and large) FilenameTemp.tiff that I have to remember to delete at some point.

[DAMphyne]

dbump,
to help prevent going over in the history states, try re-setting the history states.
go to edit-preferences-history states, change to 100 or more, depending on your RAM.
It may not become effective until you re-start PS, I'd do this before starting your next photo processing.