Picture this.
You are happily working at your desk when someone higher-up pops into your office and asks you to throw a design together and they need it done that afternoon for some reason or another. Being the pro you are, you open up Illustrator and start whipping up some sweet designs. After working for a couple hours, almost to the point of completion, the unexpected happens.
Your computer dies. Illustrator crashes. Something happens out of your control. You feel that surge of anxiety start to well up inside of you.
Did you save it?
We’ve all been there. And lets face it, it is not fun. Not in the least bit. Saving and backing up your data is important, and sometimes it is easy forget to do both of those important tasks. In steps AutoSaviour.
AutoSaviour
AutoSaviour holds up to its name. It has saved my butt on numerous occasions. This plugin is currently only for Adobe Illustrator, which is a must have if you are designing a lot of your church’s print graphics.
Here is how it works:
After you install the AutoSaviour plugin and you open up a new illustrator document, this is the window that pops up. It prompts you to setup some settings before you even start working on your design.
Often times I want to just get into the design, but this causes me to slow down a second and properly setup my document.
Setting Up
First, you want to make sure that “Enable Autosave/Remind” is checked. Here you can set the interval on how often you want the document to save. This is the core of what AutoSavior does.
Auto Savior will only save your file if you’ve made changes or revisions to your design. The next box gives you an option to set how many seconds you want it to wait until after you make a change. This could make a difference if you are working with large illustrator files. For the majority of users, leaving it set at 5 will serve you just fine.
Now to my favorite part of this plugin—the backup feature. In the free version, it only allows you to keep one backup of the file. However, if you buy the pro version, you can unlock the full potential of the backup feature. Seriously though, I don’t know why Adobe hasn’t just integrated this into the entire Adobe suite, but it has changed my life. If you are like me, sometimes your files end up looking like this:
Yeah, I know it is a complete mess. With AutoSaviour Pro, you can eliminate the tedious process of trying to save all these files in a particular structure keep it looking clean and professional. Your future self will thank you for organizing your files properly.
It’s a little bit easier to manage. Plus I dont have to manually save different versions of the file. It does that for me. You can set the amount of backups you want it to save, so that setting will vary depending on the user.
Here is how that same file could potentially look with the Pro Version:
Isn’t that better? It really isn’t a difficult plugin to master. It is essentially a few buttons when you create the document and that is it. However, in the long run, it saves you time and helps keep you sane.
Auto Savior is a rock solid plugin that I use daily in my workflow. You can download it free from their website here or purchase the pro version for $29.00 from here.
Eric J says
It seems to me that this is something that Adobe should provide! I barely use illustrator but Premiere Pro has an auto save function, unless I am missing something.
Casey Dierking says
Eric,
I completely agree! Premiere Pro does have this function. I’m scratching my head wondering why the other Adobe programs don’t have this. Maybe one day!
Eric J says
http://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/how-to/recover-files.html
They finally fixed it!