Sunday Mailbag: Saving Digital Work?

Q: How you save old work? Do you keep layered PSD files? Or do you merge layers to save space, knowing that you will never have to go back and edit them again?

A: I used to archive everything on DVDs, with layered files and all. However I later found DVDs to be unreliable as several of them have become unreadable for some reason or another… I’ve lost a lot of old digital files as a result.

For a while I would only save a flattened version of an illustration for space saving reasons as you cite. Nowadays with cloud data storage and spare hard drives being so cheap, I don’t bother to do that. I have an “archives” folder where I store all my older pieces in, complete with all related files like roughs and such. They don’t really take up that much room, and I use a redundant drive backup system to make sure a hard drive meltdown cannot wipe out my files. It’s nice to keep the layered, unflattened illustrations because you never know when you can use some element of some piece you did years ago again in some other illustration.

Thanks to Greg Halbert for the question. If you have a question you want answered for the mailbag about cartooning, illustration, MAD Magazine, caricature or similar, e-mail me and I’ll try and answer it here!