Images disappear or become corrupted after drag and drop on Mac
Illustrator 29.4
Drag and drop from a Browser to an Artboard
Use Cmd Shift 4 and drag a screendump to an artboard
Drag and Drop from Photoshop a layer with transparency to an Illustrator artboard.
Saving and opening the Illustrator file makes it disappear or gives some distorted lines.
https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator-discussions/screenshot-disappears-in-illustrator-29-3-and-up/m-p/15237401#M439060
https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator-discussions/illustrator-29-4-images-disappearing-after-save/m-p/15246575#M439583
https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator-discussions/image-disappears-after-dragging-and-dropping-from-photoshop-to-illustrator/m-p/15247056#M439609
As mentioned in comments, resetting preferences once fixes the problem. If this still doesn’t help — please drop a comment.
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Ton commented
Hi Paula, if you have updated and all your Preferences settings are the way you like them, you can save them using Edit > My Settings > Export Settings... If the problem occurs again, you can easily go back to the saved settings with Edit > My Settings > Import Settings...
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Paula commented
I'll update and see if that fixes the issue. I'll let you know if it stays the same. Thank you!
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Ton commented
Hi Paula, I am currently on 29.7.1 on Sonoma 14.7.7
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Paula commented
Hi Ton! I'm using the 29.5.1 version on a Mac with Sonoma 14.7.5
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Ton commented
Paula, which version are you currently using? For me it has not come back since resetting preferences.
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Paula commented
This is still an issue for me. I tried the Reset Preferences solution and, although it worked for some days, now it's still the same, imported screenshots keep disappearing. I don't think having to reset preferences every x time is a solution for this. Please, Adobe do something to fix this.
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Emma Haines commented
I'm working on Adobe Illustrator 2025 on desktop. I run it on a 2024 mac running Sequoia. When I drag print screens into my artwork they're disappearing, is there a way of fixing this? I've updated and it's still happening. It's really awful because me & my team at work make moodboards and all the artwork is disappearing.
Please help! You can still see where the print screen was with a bounding box but the image disappears.
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Matti commented
When I reported the beta fixing things, the installation started with fresh settings (I haven’t had a beta installed before). So the fix mechanism was probably the same as with resetting preferences manually.
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Josh commented
On Mac, if you take a screenshot (Command+Shift+4) and then drag it directly from the bottom right corner of your screen onto your art boards, some or all of the screenshots will appear blank after saving the file. This is happening on Mac OS 15.5, Adobe Illustrator 29.6.1
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david delgado commented
Thank you very much!! @gozaniki :-) IT WORKS!!
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gozaniki commented
I have been experiencing the same issue for several months, and it has been quite troublesome.
Following the suggestion mentioned here, I tried Illustrator > Preferences > Reset Preferences, and it successfully resolved the problem.
Before applying the reset, when I pasted a screenshot directly from a browser into Illustrator, the image appeared to be embedded. However, the Links panel displayed a temporary file path under “File Location,” and that file would eventually disappear after some time.
After resetting the preferences, pasting an image no longer shows any file path under “File Location”; it remains embedded as expected.
I’m glad to see the issue has been resolved, although it’s still unclear what the root cause was.
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Ton commented
@Geny, I thought I was kidding myself too, it is normally something I recommend when thing behave weird. Resetting worked for me in a beta version. Then I tried the latest regular version which still had the problem, resetting prefs fixed it. Then I tried downloading the latest Prerelease version, still problems, resetting Prefs fixed them.
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Geny commented
@Ton OMG! I thought you were kidding... although I lost all my settings (I knew it would do that but I had to try) it DID work!!!
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Ton commented
Today I did go to Settings > Preferences and clicked the Reset Preferences button. Somehow this fixed the problem with the disappearing images for me. Can someone else try this too?
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adosun commented
スクリーンキャプチャをとり、ドラッグ&ドロップでイラストレーターに貼り付けし作業をしていたところ、途中から貼り付けていた画像が表示されなくなり、回復しません。これまでは埋め込み画像としてちゃんと表示できていました。一部の画像が表示され、一部の画像が失われたまま回復しません。早急に対応を求めます。
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barb chotiner commented
this is becoming a huge issue. please fix - it never used to be an issue.
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Laurie Gow commented
This is still an issue for me as well, but I have had success with rasterizing the screenshot after I drag it into Illustrator. Hope this helps!
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Neil Uyetake commented
When I initially drag and drop an image or clip from Photoshop to Illustrator, it shows up fine and I am able to manipulate the image in Illustrator. But once I save and close the file, upon reopening the file, the images are gone. Left only are empty boxes where the images were.
It's quite frustrating to do the work and then come back later unable to see or output the design. This has been an issue for the past several months, so I suspect something broke with the latest update. I am using Illustrator 29.5.1 on M1 MacbookPro.
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Absurdum K commented
Since this year’s update, the newest version of Illustrator has a serious issue: on macOS, when I drag an object from Photoshop into Illustrator as a TIFF, the object disappears.
• While I’m working, the imported TIFF sometimes vanishes from the artboard.
• When I save the file as a PDF, the object is missing almost 100 % of the time.Please fix this urgently!
I sent a file to the print shop—and who would ever imagine that the object could simply be gone from the PDF?
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david delgado commented
The image snapshots disappear after a while.
Apple M2 MacBook Pro / Illustrator 29.5.1