It’s an awful feeling, isn’t it? You’re up to your elbows in a complicated Photoshop project and all of a sudden…Photoshop freezes.
Not only have you been knocked off your groove, but also you’re left frantically trying to recall the last time you saved your project. Have you just lost hours of work?
The good news is that it’s likely you can get Photoshop moving again. The even better news is that you can probably recover at least most of your work.
Let’s take a look at how to unfreeze or force quit Photoshop when it is not responding.
Note: I use the Windows version of Photoshop. If you are using a Mac, the workspace will look slightly different from the screenshots displayed here.
Table of Contents
How to Unfreeze Photoshop
What causes Photoshop to freeze up in the first place? In many cases, your computer has simply run out of enough available memory or system resources.
Photoshop is a heavy program and requires a lot of memory to work. If you are working with a particularly large file (or your hard drive is getting full), Photoshop can easily overwhelm your computer and freeze up.
The first step is to try to release enough memory to get Photoshop moving again. Close any other applications you may have running at the same time. Let’s look at how to do this on both Windows and Mac.
Windows
Even if your mouse is unresponsive, you can still close programs by accessing the Task Manager. To do this, press Ctrl + Alt + Del.
On Windows 11, the screen will darken and a list of options will appear in the center. Choose Task Manager from the list.
You’ll see a list of all programs that are currently running on your computer, as well as those running in the background. Mine by default is listed in alphabetical order.
It will be most helpful to me to know which programs (besides Photoshop) are tying up my computer’s memory the most. Click the Memory column to reorganize the programs by which ones are using the most memory.
Then you can select the program(s) you’d like to close and click End Task at the top. This will free up for Photoshop the memory these programs were using.
Hopefully, Photoshop will become responsive again. And I would highly suggest saving your project at this point. If you continue having problems, at least you will have had a chance to save what you’ve been working on!
Mac
To close programs on Mac, the process is pretty much the same. Press Command + Option + Esc to access the Force Quit Applications window.
Similarly to Windows, you’ll have a list of programs that are currently running. Then you can choose whatever programs you’d like to close and click Force Quit.
Give it a few minutes and hopefully, you’ll find that Photoshop becomes responsive.
But what if it doesn’t?
What If Closing Other Applications Doesn’t Work?
What if you close everything else you can possibly close and Photoshop stays stubbornly frozen? You’re going to have to shut down Photoshop itself and pray you don’t lose too much of your work.
Following the same method you used for closing the other programs, use the Task Manager to force Photoshop to close.
Finding Your Work
Now comes the moment you’ve been dreading. You find out how much of your work you’ve lost.
With any luck, you won’t have lost much. Let’s discuss prevention and where to look to find the most recent version of your project.
Photoshop’s Auto-Save Feature
The people who created Photoshop most definitely feel your pain when it comes to lost work. Thus, they’ve included a built-in auto-save feature in Photoshop to help avoid these types of catastrophes.
As long as this feature is active, you should have a fairly recent version of your work. Open Photoshop and go to File. Hover over Open Recent and you’ll see a list of your most recent work.
Depending on how your Photoshop is set up, you also might see recent files as soon as you open Photoshop.
Cross your fingers, choose your file, and hope that you’ve only lost a few minutes of work at most.
Where I live, the power goes out suddenly quite frequently. I can tell you that this feature has saved me more than once when I turn my computer back on and what I’ve been working on is mostly current!
Turning on the Auto-Save Feature
If for some reason your auto-save feature is not active, I would highly recommend turning it on ASAP. You can access and adjust the feature right in Photoshop.
Go to Edit hover over Preferences, and choose File Handling.
Make sure the Automatically Save Recovery Information Every box is checked. Then you can choose the frequency from the dropdown menu to the right.
To the left of this box, there are a few preferences you can set. For image previews, you can choose to Always Save, Never Save, or Ask When Saving. The file extension can automatically use Lower Case or Upper Case.
You can set the default file location to either Creative Cloud or Your Computer.
Click OK once you’ve chosen the settings you prefer.
Finding Recent Files Manually
What if you didn’t find a recent copy of your work in Photoshop? Are you out of luck?
Not quite yet.
Temporary files are usually stored on your computer as a precaution for power outages and computer crashes. You’ll have to go look for them, but with a little computer prowess, they shouldn’t be too hard to find.
On Windows, open the Windows File Explorer. You may need to go to Users, choose your UserName, choose Local Settings, and then the Temp folder.
In my case, I found the Adobe Temp folder right on my C Drive.
Simply open that Temp folder and choose the most recent version of your file.
Mac users will find the temp files by going to Finder, then Application, then Terminal. Type in open/temp and press Enter. Go to Photoshop Temp in the Temporary files and choose the latest PSD file to open.
Save the Day When Photoshop Freezes!
There you have it! Thankfully, unfreezing Photoshop can be as simple as closing down other applications that the computer is running. But even if you have to force quit Photoshop, you can usually find a recent version of your work somewhere so that you won’t lose too much.
What if Photoshop freezing becomes a frequent problem? You may need to free up more space on your hard drive or it may be time to update your system.
Curious to learn more about Photoshop? Be sure to check out some of our tutorials here on Photoshop Buzz. You can learn everything from how to add realistic fire to an image to how to create gorgeous composite images.
About Cara Koch