Tips and Tricks for Saving and Exporting in Photoshop

Updated 8-2022

Here are several quick tips for saving and exporting files in Photoshop:

Default Save File Location — When saving files in Photoshop 2022, the default save location is set to  Creative Cloud. To set the default save location to your computer instead, select Preferences > File Handling and set the Default File Location to “On your computer”.

Background Save — Background Save is on by default and enables you to continue working in Photoshop when selecting File Save or Save As by saving the file in as a background task. Note: this feature can be disabled under Preferences > File Handling to improve performance for example, when automating PS.

Auto Save — Auto Save can help recover changes made to an open document if your computer crashes before you’ve had a chance to save. To select the Auto Save time interval, select Preferences > File Handling and enable “Automatically Save Recovery Information”. Then, use the dropdown menu to choose a timeframe. Note: this feature can be also disabled under Preferences > File Handling for improving performance when running actions etc.

Saving Files to Their Original Folders — By default, when choosing Save As, Photoshop automatically “Saves As” to the same location as the original. To save files to a different location (such as a “processed folder), select Preferences > File Handling and disable  “Save As to Original Folder”. 

Save A Copy — Photoshop automatically adds the word “copy” to the end of a filename when saving a copy of the file. To disable this, select Preferences > File Handling and enable “Do not append “copy” to file name when saving a copy”. Note: enabling this might cause accidental document overwriting and loss of work if you use identical file names for both the original and the copy that you save.

Cloud Documents Local Storage — When saving cloud documents, change the default location for local copies in Preferences > File Handling > Cloud Documents Local Working Directory. Click “Choose Directory…”, navigate to and choose the preferred location.

Close All Files in Photoshop — Option- clicking (Mac) | Alt -clicking (Win) a file’s close button will instruct Photoshop to close all open documents, however Photoshop will ask whether or not you want to save each file before it closes it. I you know that you either want to save all or not save all, you can bypass the dialog by selecting File > Close All (instead of File > Close), and, when asked if you if you want to save changes, enable the option to Apply to All to save all documents without further prompts.

Close All Others — Select File > Close Others to close all open files except for the currently active document.  

Saving files with Maximize Compatibility — In order to save a layered Photoshop file with a high resolution preview for other applications to use (Lightroom for example), it is necessary for Photoshop to create a “flattened” version of the image and save this flattened version within the file. To have Photoshop automatically save the flattened version, set the  Preferences > File Handling > Maximize PSD and PSB File Compatibility to Always. Note: If you ever need to open a flattened (composite) version of a layered document, choose File > Open, navigate to the image, and  hold Option + Shift  (Mac) | Alt + Shift (Win) and click Open. A dialog appears with the message “Read the composite data instead?” Click OK to confirm. Note: this shortcut also works when opening PSD files in the OS. 

Requiring a Password to Open a Document — Saving a document as a Photoshop PDF allows additional security options. Choose Save As, select Photoshop PDF, and  select the PDF Security options on the left hand side. Assign the desired restrictions on the file such as passwords and permissions to open and print. 

Exporting Files — Since saving files and exporting files go hand in hand, I thought I would  also include this episode of 3, 2, 1, Photoshop!  Three Ways to Export in Photoshop CC. Watch it and discover how to export entire documents, multiple Artboards, as well as individual layers and layer groups.

Image Processor — If you need to save a number of images to a different different format (PSD, TIF and/or JPEG), Photoshop has a feature called Image Processor. Although you can find it under File > Scripts > Image Processor, this method requires that you select a folder of images. If you prefer to only convert a selection of images, begin by selecting the desired images in Bridge and then choose Tools > Photoshop > Image Processor (note that you can also select all of the images in a folder (or collection) using this method by not selecting any files (if no files are selected, Bridge will assume that you want to process all of them). In the Image Processor dialog box, choose a destination folder, and a File Type (or types, you can process files to multiple formats at once) with any additional options such as Resize to Fit and Compression etc.. You can even choose to run an action after Image Processor batch converts the files. Of course all of this can be done through actions, but Image Processor is a simple and powerful way to quickly convert images without having to know how to create Actions and run the Batch command.

Saving as JPEG — When choosing File > Save As, you can select JPEG as the file format however you need to know that saving as a JPEG will convert the file from 16 bit down to 8 bit (as the JPEG file format does not support 16 bit) and save the JPEG as a flattened file (as the JPEG file format does not support layers).

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