Do so now: we’re going to clear out all the temporary files that Photoshop uses to make sure it doesn’t lose any of your work. Step One: Save Your Workīefore we go any further, open Photoshop and make sure you don’t have any current projects that you haven’t saved to a local file. But for a faster and more hands-on approach (and a look at how huge some of these files really are), we recommend the manual method. You can get rid of some temp files, including most Photoshop files, with Windows’ Disk Cleanup tool.
RELATED: Is It Safe to Delete Everything in Windows' Disk Cleanup? If this is a problem for you-or if you just want to do a quick cleaning-follow the steps below. Some users can fill up their entire hard drive with temp files without even realizing it. If you frequently work with large Photoshop projects, this means the files can be big in both size and number. Unfortunately, Photoshop is kind of crappy at file management, and the temp files can often stick around after the program is closed.
The files are supposed to be deleted automatically when you close Photoshop. These files serve two purposes: they allow Photoshop to operate without relying exclusively on RAM, and they create a de facto backup file in case the program-or your computer-crashes. So Photoshop saves a lot of your work to local “scratch” files. Photoshop is a program that works with a lot of data at once, and not all of that data can be kept in your computer’s memory alone.
