Preview not saving edited photos (JPEGs) on MacBook running OSX 14.0 (Sonoma)

Same problem here. I've used Preview for as long as it has existed. I scan a jpg document, make changes and the ****** thing won't save. I can print it, I can print to pdf but when I try to save it says it can't be done and then tells me to duplicate, which it then DOES NOT DO it! No duplicate exists. I've been trying to make it work for over 2 weeks now, and this just began with the last update. Who messed this thing up? Now I have to put it in Photoshop, make edits, change it save it, and transfer it to Preview to finish up for pdf export (only because that pdf export works better). It is a mess completely FUBAR!

I am running the latest version of OS - 14.3 on an M2 MBP with 32 gig RAM and 2T SSD. I upgraded my 11 year old MBP just to do higher level image processing. I'm still having terrible trouble with Preview. I'm an amateur "pro-sumer" photographer and I have a variety of Non-Adobe apps that will save photos just fine. However, I *used* to use Preview for either initial or final "tweaks" and it has been very important to me - until OS 14 when it basically quite saving at least half the images I've been working on. These are 99% COLOR images. I don't get it, there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to which ones it will and won't save!

I've seen two workarounds - a) save as PDF and then re-open as JPG. This does work. b) change the color profile - I haven't tried that. These may be good for one or two images, but I work on dozens, scores or even hundreds in a sitting and this is not reasonable. The speed and ease with which I could adjust color profile, contrast, size, etc of images quickly used to be essential to me. Graphic Converter is a fantastic donation-ware image processing package. I use this, but again, final fast tweaks in Preview were important to me.

This snafu has slowed my work considerably! Saving as PDF and re-opening as JPG is a time consuming and seemingly worthless workaround for my purposes, it's not a solution. What happened to "computers make your life easier"?

Apple - PLEASE fix Preview!

Thank you

Came here looking for a solution. Photos I scanned with B/W or greyscale profiles will not save edits. Photos with color profiles will. Weird bug to have, but that seems to the problem.

BTW doing the scans set to color instead of b/w, and changing the color profile on the one I scanned in b/w both worked for me.

Where are these files from, and in what location are you trying to save them?

I regularly edit image files to add annotation in Preview and I have not come across this (though it is usually png files that I deal with).

Same problem here on Sonoma 14.1.2. Cannot save a cropped JPG image with cryptic error message "The document could not be autosaved." This after attempting to manually save the file. After attempting to duplicate the file, get error message "The operation could not be completed." Export to a different JPG file name in a different folder locations fails with "Could not be exported". Office apps are able to save, so problem appears to be due to an issue with Preview.

The only thing that worked for me was taking a screen shot of the image that has been edited. It did save my changes. Also exporting to PDF and back to JPEG works but too confusing. I read somewhere Apple isn't supporting 8 bit grayscale. Is this true?

Property inspector won't allow you to change to RGB which would be what to do. RGB isn't in the drop-down menu. Any suggestions on how to apply a new profile? Could the app Color Sync work and what are the steps to do it.

None of us have any knowledge of Apple's plans.

If this was an oversight, or a deliberate choice, only Apple knows.

You could use the feedback page to let Apple know that support for this is desired.

https://www.apple.com/feedback

Taking a greyscale jpg and adding a color profile triples the size of the file. It does then make it possible to do 'normal' edits with Preview, but Preview is still incapable of saving an edited greyscale file.

not unlikely at all- I am scanning many years' worth of black and white negatives (for which I don't want colour information) so the scanner is set at 16 bit greyscale which is good enough for a first pass on all of the film and then if there are any good frames I can redo those with more detail later. I am having the same issue with autosave not working on greyscale but any colour files from scanned colour negatives or slides are still autosaving properly. I usually only use Finder to rotate the images to the correct orientation, any other editing is in photoshop or Lightroom. I'm currently on Sonoma 14.2.1 anyway

Same issue here. Scanning (tons of) docs to a file, trying to rotate scans to correct orientation. Originally scanning in BW, preview refusing to save file so changed to colour - seems it likes the colour images but not the BW.

Excellent problem report. This is a community forum and is not reviewed by Apple.

I encourage you to contact Apple tech support and open a defect ticket so we aren’t just talking to each other. Perhaps you could share the defect number on this forum so we can all track progress. Sorry to ask you, but yours seems a good test case for R&D.

Anyone else have a better idea?

The Speakologist wrote:

One of the first things I tried (multiple times) - it made no difference!

Then, how about reinstalling the macOS?