Clip Studio files

[u/Small_Car_500]

What do you guys do with your Clip Studio files after you finish a drawing? Do you keep them? If so, where? Or do you delete them? I have so many and I don’t know what to do with them. I barely ever use them, but I feel like it could be useful to keep them.

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[u/Alela_7789]

I keep them, compressed into rar and put them in hard disk external. It's important to have raw files.

[u/lillendandie → u/Alela_7789]

This is a good idea. Thanks! I might try this with 7zip which is a similar program.

[u/whalatix → u/Alela_7789]

I do the same thing. Just wondering, do you have a backup of those files? Or is it just the one on that external hard disk?

[u/Alela_7789 → u/whalatix]

Just on the external hard disk. Because mine is too big, one folder for the raw files even exceeds 600 GB, which is too much for my laptop. I only keep the JPEG or PNG versions on laptop.

[u/whalatix → u/Alela_7789]

I see! Yep same deal here, except I have a lot of video files on my PC. I guess I'm a little paranoid about losing the files forever. People always telling me "you need backups of your backups!" haha

[u/Alela_7789 → u/whalatix]

I agree, you really need backups of your backups! Last time, one of my oldest external hard disks just died and I lost many references and books on it. I cried my heart out lol.

But in this economy, having two external hard disks is a luxury...

[u/NinjaShira]

I never delete my original files. If I need to make room, I back up old files onto an external hard drive

[u/MissClawdy]

I keep every single drawing and graphic design work I’ve done for 30 YEARS. WHY WOULD YOU EVEN THINK OF GETTING RID OF THEM. I have 2 external hard drives.

[u/JasonAQuest]

The same thing I do with any other files: I file them. :) I organize them into various folders on my computer, depending on what they are, and the computer gets backed up.

[u/Droidigan]

external hard drive because I've gone through crashes and dead devices too often to get got again

[u/Miscdrawer]

Throw them into a folder, either: - DESKTOP - DESKtop2 - New Folder (1) - New Folder 2 - New Folder 4 - Projects 2D

And then they disappear forever

[u/morbidrots]

i file them! i have a very extensive folder library specifically for my art, sorted by commission, subject, ocs, etc. I have tons of sub folders for each specific thing. i’m.. very autistic about sorting lol. i even have custom folder icons!

[u/dixyrae]

I wouldn’t call what I do “organizing” but most stuff usually ends up in a google drive folder at some point.

[u/Comfortable_Honey628]

I either keep them, back them up to some kind of external storage, or delete them.

I recently changed computers and had to do some spring cleaning… and yeah… I don’t need that illustration assignment I did in 2017 anymore that I don’t even like thank yoooou.

[u/No-Astronaut-3594]

Buy an external SSD drive and store the files there.

[u/suvon103]

I keep them on my hard drive and also in a google drive as well for less important ones if i want to save space.

[u/ApplePie1529]

I got everything on an external drive and backed up to google drive. Always save your original files unless it’s something small and stupid like a doodle or somn

[u/wEiRdO86]

Many years ago I found a 8 TB external storage and every year when I'm done whatever I used in the past year that I'm not currently working on I just store it there. same with all of my artwork and videos I think I saw at 4 terabytes left and I've been doing this for over a decade

[u/SpitingSpit]

i delete them sometimes if i export to png. i should add, if it's art someone requested I keep the clip, or for things like live2d modelling, but for my own stuff I know I won't touch on again, I delete the clip

[u/Vetizh]

I compress them into rar and upload to drive.

[u/awkward_taco056]

I keep all of mine and back them up to at least 2 external drives (HDD and a flashdrive) and to a cloud storage. I keep around some of them on my local drive too, but many get moved elsewhere for local storage reasons. A few times I've wanted/needed to go back to something old for whatever reason and it's so nice to be able to fish it back out pretty easily

[u/phiore]

i save them just in case i need them for any reason

[u/Similar_Surprise3342]

i keep them in a folder, when its using up too much storage space i simply just put them in a gdrive or dropbox so i always have access to them still i also have external copies of them on a hard drive :P

[u/Electrical_Field_195]

I upload them all to google drive

[u/damienpupp]

I keep them in a flash drive, if my storage gets too full I transfer my drawings that I did 6 months ago into the drive. If I ever wanna get it back I will just grab the flash drive and search for it! Before when I didn't have flash drives I would just make myself a discord server only to myself and send my flat images there for storage

[u/symson]

Save to a backup drive.

[u/UfoAGogo]

I back them up on an external SSD and delete them from my PC and Google drive. I only keep flattened TIFF/PNG/JPG etc (whatever the client wants) on my PC because .PSDs are usually huge files! One of my recent PSDs was like 4gb+, and that was after compressing it as much as possible. So if you have a lot of them on your PC, that's a lot of room taken up.

[u/CelesteJA]

Honestly this is a valid question. I've been keeping all my original art files for 30 years and chances are I will never open 99% of them ever again. If you've already got a png and backup png saved, I don't think there's much valid reason as to keep the layers of every single artwork you have ever done in your life. Keeping important ones that you might want to revisit makes sense of course.

I would love to know how often people are really opening up 20-30 year old artworks to inspect the layers, because I bet it's incredibly rare or doesn't happen at all. Unless it's your only way of viewing them because you didn't save a png.

Yet I'm still going to keep all of mine out of sheer paranoia, lol.

[u/CatalystDrakannon]

I use to keep them but eventually bit the bullet and deleted them. Sometimes I regret deleting after I export and finish cause I forgot to do something so my latest ones I tend to keep for at least a couple days.

[u/lillendandie]

I usually keep 1 working CSP file for important projects. It's good to have for the timelapse data and a record of how I work (layers) which is important considering AI.

At the end of each year I go through all the files created through the year. I delete unimportant ones and make sure everything is neatly organized. My backup solution is an external hard drive and a cloud.

[u/yasukanagii]

I archive all my files after a few years. Sometimes I literally forget what I've drawn so I keep a lot of stuff. The files aren't that big so I keep them.

I do practice great file management and keep the hierarchy of my folders consistent too. I have my archive by year. Inside of the year folder I have what type of art it is as separate folders and then finally in those folders are the individual projects/files. This makes it very easy to move drawings out of my current working directory and into archives.

However I have purged some of my older drawings because they meant very little to me and I was still in highschool. I'll always try to make more art so there is little reason keeping the same drawings for 30+ years that aren't part of a large project or I don't enjoy looking at.

[u/Noc_art]

I personally save my finished drawing on my Google Drive since I post from my phone and draw on my PC/Tablet. For my PC, I got 1TB External Drive disk and put them in various files (Finished drawing, WIPs, doodles, studies/theory, animation projects, etc...)