When I save out layers of a .psd file as a .png file, I get a message reading "could not open because the file-format module cannot parse the file" when I try to open the .png. I have checked to make sure the .png plug-in is in my photoshop folder, which it is. I have also erased my photoshop preferences and repaired permissions, as well as re-installing Photoshop completely. All of these steps have been temporary fixes. After I save out more than a couple of files succesfully, I start getting this error again.
IT can’t be fixed because it’s not a known problem…
Every time we’ve seen similar errors, the cause has been traced to bad RAM, bad hard disks, bad networks, bad network servers, etc.
It sounds like you haven’t even located the cause of the problem yet. The first thing you should be looking at is the drive where you are saving these files. Then your system’s RAM. And if you’re saving over a network: don’t do that, it’s inviting trouble.
"And if you’re saving over a network: don’t do that, it’s inviting trouble."
I understand the advice repeated on this forum that saving over a network is not something Adobe supports because there are so many problems that can occur beyond Adobe’s control. The advice is always "talk to your IP guys about setting up your network correctly."
Talk to them about what?
Is there a network configuration over which Photoshop CAN write files? Does Adobe have guidelines as to the "proper" network configuration over which Photoshop file corruption does NOT happen?
As many times as the advice has been given here to write files out to the local drive, then copy them over the network to the server, this is NOT a viable option in some of the situations where I have to work. The boss complains that the job has to have access by many people at unpredictable times and that local copies are NOT an acceptable method of work flow. In fact local copies can result in undoing a critical change without warning. Someone else might overwrite my latest version of a file with their "local" (therefore older) copy they started working on long before I sent my version to the server.
I know how to do my job – scanning and photography and how to use Photoshop, but I know nothing about networks. What is it I am supposed to "talk to my IT guys about" to help me with the network situation? My "IT guys" say the network is fine. And frankly, they say "Adobe is handing (me) BS."
This is going no-where.
Why can the OS send a saved PS file over the network, but Photoshop can’t write the same file information?
If you are trying to help, I appreciate the effort, but I have no idea what your response means. Did you read my post?
Maybe this clarification of my question would help:
Why is it Adobe’s advice that it is safe for the OS to write a saved, local Photoshop file over the network (any network), but Photoshop can’t write that same file information over the network?
Adobe has no network setup guidelines because there are too many variables, and if the network and server were working correctly, then there would be no problem and any software can save to it safely. But if they’re not setup correctly, then using any software to save across the network is risky. How many ways can you misconfigure a network server or how many buggy components can you put into a network or server? Too many to count.
Your boss needs a lesson in networks and reliability. He’s asking for corruption and problems, and probably wasting more time than he is saving (bottom line: he’s losing money on this approach).
Photoshop uses the OS APIs to write files. If the OS cannot write files to their file server on their network without corruption, then odds are pretty good that there is a problem with the network or server. Photoshop DOES write the SAME information to the local disk or the network server. But if the network or server is bad, then the data has a greater chance of being corrupted when saving to the network server. Ask your IT guys why applications can write a file correctly to the local hard disk, but the same bits written using the same APIs don’t arrive safely on their server. The problem has to be somewhere in the OS, the network, or the server. And since networks do work correctly for many people, odds are pretty good that the error is not in the OS.
If you don’t want corruption, save to the local disk, then copy to the network server (the OS does more error checking when you do it that way). If you keep saving across the network, expect file corruption.
You are giving me the same answer I’ve seen repeatedly in these forums which is useless to those of us who are not engineers.
My boss, who IS an engineer, and his IT service, says the same thing about your advice that you say about him. The "IT guys" say there is nothing wrong with the network, that it is set up prpoerly in every respect and that if a piece of software writing files to the server has trouble doing that, there is a problem with that program NOT the network.
You keep saying that the problem IS the network. No other program nor the OS has a problem with the network, but Photoshop does. Yet your answer is always that Photoshop is not the problem. You have not examined any of the very many networks having this common problem, yet you blame them. I assure you, the guys who set them up are as sure of their position as you seem to be of yours.
There was a time when major software companies were interested in solving such major problems. Saving to local drives is NOT a desireable work flow. I don’t care how often you repeat the mantra that it is.
And on and on it goes, and the finger pointing continues without any constructive ideas or specific explanation from you of what it is about all those networks set up so poorly. The problematic common denominator is ALWAYS Photoshop.
And I’m an engineers, with IT experience, and lots of application development and debugging experience.
Your network is 99% likely to be the cause of the problem.
Again: application software has NO IDEA that it is writing to a server, it uses the same APIs to write to the server as it does to write to the local disk. If it fails on the server and works on the local disk, then the server or network is almost certainly at fault.
How many other applications do you use that transfer large files and do extensive error checking on the contents of those files?
No, this is the fault of your network or server. We’ve been through this, we’ve tried to solve it, and EVERY SINGLE TIME it turns out to be a fault in the network or server.
And no, this happens to other applications as well – when they transfer large files and do error checking when they read the files back in. This is not specific to Photoshop.
"We’ve been through this, we’ve tried to solve it, and EVERY SINGLE TIME it turns out to be a fault in the network or server."
WHAT kind of problems? What? Describe some typical problems you discovered so that they can be avoided, out here in your-paycheck-is-on-the-line land.
Tell us so that we (users) can "talk to our IT guys" as you have told us over and over. Telling them their network isn’t working gets about the same respose we get from you when we say Photoshop isn’t working.
Besides, you just keep repeating faulty logic and ignoring a message that has been repeated by several others: the problem doesn’t happen when Photoshop is out of the equation.
The OS saves the files over the network 100% of the time. No errors. No corruption. In fact, you advise us to save then copy as the only solution to the problem.
If Photoshop is using the OS to accomplish the same thing, something is wrong with the way it asks the OS to do it, or the OS is not talking to Photoshop or some other glitch that I don’t have the technical know-how to articulate.
All that I (or all of us who are having the problem) know is that the OS gets it right when we just ask it to copy the saved file over to a server. Other programs are getting it right when they send over the network (I can’t tell you what programs, I don’t know how things work at that level) but when Photoshop and the OS work together (Photoshop calling the OS to do the work) something is going wrong. THAT’s not a network issue and "IT guys," being as stubbornly pig-headed as you, defend their programs as fiercely as you.
But, again, if you would name some network issues you have identified as culprits, THAT’s something we can "talk to our IT guys" about.
We’ve encountered literally HUNDREDS of network problems. I am not going to list them all for you. The most obvious have been: bad switches, bad routers, disk problems on the server, bad RAM on the server, bad CPU on the server (yeah, it happens), etc. These should be obvious, and should be checked, but it sounds like your IT guys would rather deny a problem than solve it.
We’ve been through this time and again. It’s always the network or the server (or Netware, but I HOPE you’re not dealing with that anymore).
I’m not giving you any faulty logic, I’m just giving you the plain and simple facts: it ain’t Photoshop. Nothing is wrong with how Photoshop works with the OS APIs, otherwise it wouldn’t even save to your local hard disk correctly. Again, the only logical conclusion here is that the fault is in the network or server. If you factor out the network and server, it works correctly – that’s a known fact. And since the application has no idea where the destination volume lives (using the same APIs for saving), then the possibilities are the OS, the network and the server. And since other people CAN save across the network safely (including here at Adobe, we never see these problems on our servers), that rules out the OS as being a likely cause.
And again: the OS does a LOT more extensive error checking when copying a file from the explorer/finder to the server than when the application saves the file directly (apparently because they run into the same sort of problems).
I’m sorry, but if your IT guys aren’t taking this seriously, you might need to find more knowledgeable IT staff.
To add to what Chris has explained throughout this thread, and to go back to what I wrote in post #1, it’s worth noting that networks almost invariably involve the use of NAV (Norton Anti Virus). NAV is a known and Symantec-acknowledged destroyer of Photoshop files.
That is just one more of the "literally HUNDREDS of network problems" not in the short list above.
Norton is NASTY stuff in OS X. Stay away from anything with the Norton name if you’re on any version of OS X, especially do NOT let anything with the Norton name (like Norton Anti Virus, File Saver) ever reside on your computer.
NAV (Norton Anti Virus) can lead to permanent file damage. Files damaged by NAV are not recoverable. NAV can also prevent many PostScript files from parsing, even if not damaged permanently.
Disk Doctor and Speed Disk are known to cause the kind of directory damage that can lead to kernel panics.
Another excellent reason to steer clear from all things Norton!
The kernel panic FAQ is divided by the order of most common occurrences of kernel panics:
* Directory * Drivers * Permissions * RAM
1. A directory failure or user accidentally moving .kext files that should be left alone. The directory may fail, due to an accident caused by Norton Utilities or Systemworks, which may at random corrupt a directory even when trying to repair it. Norton Anti-Virus will not do this, but Norton Disk Doctor and Norton Speed Disk have a history of doing this.
Our systems (Capitalism) may be the best but it is so unfortunate to see great companies, time and again be purchase by monoliths and mediocratized, or in the case of NAV absolutely perverted.
The stuffit that Raymond Lau created would probably stlll work fine with a few tweaks to it–instead we know have Allume sytems with Stuffit 11? Eleven? How much can one do to a compression engine except make it so people with stuffit nine have to buy eleven so they can open files sent to them in V11 format.
I agree that Allume is going bonkers with ‘upgrades’ for money rather than function but one of your premises is incorrect. You still don’t have to buy Stuffit Expander.
In Stuffit Deluxe (I don’t know about Stuffit Standard) you have an option of saving files in the latest compression format or a generic Stuffit format with greater backward compatibility. That’s the one I always use.
I stand corrected on that. I was just quickly pulling and upgrade example out of my butt and didn’t think it all the way thru–but you get/got the idea.
As much as I like many adobe products, for my uses I’m pretty sure I could have gotten away with using CS1 if not for the fact that I receive AI files written in cs2 so I’ve had no choice.
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