Recover painting from .tmp files after crash?

[Krigen813]

Hello everyone. So, I just got slapped by the "don't forget to save" fairy. Was working from the ground up on a space scene and didn't save at all. I had just gotten some good foundational work across 4 layers and was organizing my upcoming tools into a toolbox. When I switched to docked mode and set my preferred boxes in place, ArtRage crashed with my unsaved piece blown to the digital wind. I look now in the folder where I save my .ptg files, and there are plenty of .tmp files from around the time I was working on this painting. Is this recoverable? I tried importing one of these .tmp files in ArtRage with "import image file", but it didn't recognize it.

I can, of course, start over and it won't be the end of the world if I can't recover that exact painting, but I had just created a layer "mask" from my own custom sponge sticker sheet spray brush (I made from using actual sea sponge) that I was going to be happy using as a stencil for the nebula airbrushing. No doubt many of you understand how tedious it can be to setup custom brushes, especially with the sticker sheet spray settings, and how satisfying it is when you get a result you really like.

[markw]

Hello Krigen813 and welcome to the ARtRage forums
Sadly, as you have found, AR’s .tmp files don’t contain any info usable by AR to reconstruct a painting from.
I think what the .tmp files contain is more like a history of “events”, Undo steps that sort of thing, so there is no actual image data per-say for AR to import using the ‘Import Image File…’ command.
AR dose have it’s own Backup function in; Preferences > Advanced Preferences > Store Backup Files
But that needs to be turned on first and then only creates a backup each time you hit Save.
If you are not familiar with it, you can read more about it here: https://www.artrage.com/manuals/gett...4/preferences/
But yes, remember the old digital mantra; Save and Save often!

[Krigen813]

Hi markw. Thank you for the reply and the welcome. I don't know how I managed to not save at all! All of the practicing and toying I did leading up to that I saved for future toying in other .ptg files like it was second nature. I guess I got too excited about having some confidence of where I was going with this and how. I need a script that pops up once a few minutes after opening ArtRage and again once a few minutes after creating a new layer that then asks me "did you save?" lol.

Time to delete the space wasting .tmp files and get back to the literal drawing board. I look forward to posting this piece in the WIP section "soon."

Also of note: I was very surprised by this crash. I've used ArtRage since my old Sony Viao came with ArtRage Studio and I had upgraded to AR4 and this is the first time I've ever had it crash. I've even worked on much larger canvases than this was with no issue besides a little lag. Guess it just wasn't my night.