A number of folks on Adobe’s internal design team have been putting the beta of GridIron Flow through its paces. Among other things, Flow can automatically version your files (much like Apple’s Time Machine, but continuously as you work and without relying on an external drive).
I just saw this comment from designer Cynthia Fong:
Yesterday, I accidently saved over a file that I didn’t want to, so I opened
it in FLOW and retrieved my previous version. SWEET!
I’ve always said that the beauty of Flow is that it’s like an airbag–totally unobtrusive unless and until you need it. The software does lots of other things, too, but I think its file protection features will be the first to pay off for most people. You can download the free beta from the GridIron site.
(For the record, I don’t have any formal tie to or vested interest in these guys. I just dig what they’re up to & would have loved it in my previous life as a Web designer. If I could somehow clone myself, I’d go work on Flow in addition to Photoshop.)
Tangentially related: my new 17″ MacBook Pro just arrived yesterday (yeah!), and Time Machine did its usual scary-good job of facilitating transfer from one machine to another. The fact that I have last week’s browser history on a machine that showed up yesterday is pretty amazing. (FWIW I’d previously hit a file permissions problem when backing up to my Drobo, but these steps from MacFixIt got me sorted out–and I didn’t even manage to nuke my hard drive via Terminal. Thanks, guys.)
If you want to get the back up/versioning aspect on the PC you can get it from this bit of software:
http://www.centered.com/
Second Copy will back up files on the fly and has saved my bacon a few times. It’s not perfect as it can’t handle locked files but otherwise it’s totally transparent.
Daris,
Probably not clear from the quick jot that John wrote but GridIron Flow is also available for Windows and provides the same versioning functionality as well; along with several other yummy features. 🙂
Daniel Brown
Sr. Evangelist
GridIron Software
In the “free” category (if you have Vista Buiness or above), Vista’s “Previous Versions” feature does file versioning, and has saved me a couple times, no external drive required.
It’s enabled by default, I believe. Just right-click on the file or folder and look for the “Previous Versions” tab.
I’m interested in Flow, but Nucleo Pro 2 has been a bit flaky, so I’m going to see how it shakes out first.
I currently pay good money so I don’t have to consciously worry about backing up my work.
Automatic version saves are the least of it. Flow radically changes the game for anyone working with graphics files.
Searching (and finding!) a PSD on your system based on name of one of its layers — that’s a potential life saver. So is being able to output a detailed time sheet that shows exactly how much time went into each file of a project. And automatic visual versioning with instant (and it is instant) swap of a previous one with the current one (so the current one becomes a “version”) makes it so darned easy. I’ve used Vista’s Previous Version. It’s a far cry from what John’s talking about.