Does it make sense to use source control to manage graphics files (e.g. PSDs & AI files)

Question

Of course source control tools like Git, (Mercurial, SVN, etc...) can do a great job at managing source code. But I wonder, do these tools provide the developer with any advantage when used to store copies of files such as PhotoShop PSDs and Illustrator AI files? Does it make sense to use these tools with these kind of files? Would I be storing less in the repository than the sum of the file sizes of all of these files? Even though the file format of these files is only machine readable, I would expect that in for such applications, especially when dealing with vector rather than raster graphics, a small part of these files would change, and much of the rest would remain the same.

Thank you for your insight.

Answer 1

Git itself can manage any kind of data, provided their are not too big or to numerous.
See "git with large files" ("large" as in size or number).

Diff'ing pictures/graphics isn't a feature supported by Git natively, but a Git repo hosting service can extends its web GUI to offer such a support.

GitHub just announced (June 2014) "ePSD Viewing & Diffing", which extends their " image viewing and diffing" (Nov. 2011)

Any PSD assets in your repositories will be treated just like images, meaning you can view them inline and use our three image view modes to see what's changed in a commit.

Update Mach 2022: this is no longer supported.
See "Working with non-code files" for the files for which diff is supported.