Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers Tutorials
Brush Tools / History Brush
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Subtitles of the Movie (Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers / Brush Tools / History Brush)
The History Brush in essence, let's you return part of your image to the way it originally was, or the way it was at a point in time that you specify. That can be helpful if you've made changes directly to pixels and-or decide that you've overdone something, or a series of adjustments, and-or you want to limit the areas where that effect applies. To begin, come over here to the History Brush. Make sure you've chosen the History Brush and not the Art History Brush, which lives underneath it. Next you must be on a Pixel Layer. Check your Layers Panel and if you've made a series of adjustments then you'll need to click on the topmost Layer and add a new empty Pixel Layer. I'll do that by clicking this Icon, which is the Create a New Layer Icon. Make sure that it's selected. You can tell that it's selected because it's highlighted. Next you need to specify what state or point in time the image should return to. You do this in the History Panel. By default, the History Brush is set to the way you opened the image. You can see the little Icon is right here. You can click in a box anywhere in your History to use a different point in time as the source that you want to return to. For this image I'm going to use the original source, the way the image was when I opened it, because I'm thinking that although I used the Color Replacement Brush to change the color of the sweater in the Color Replacement movie, you know, I've also removed some distracting elements from the background, but now I'm thinking that I wish that maybe I had left the color of the sweater its original color, or maybe even the entire sweater. So I'm going to use the History Brush to change it back. I'll come up here and I'll click and drag, and you can see that the sweater is returning to its original blue wherever I drag the cursor. Now it's not providing any guidelines for me exactly where it's going so if I want to continue moving on I will just drag the cursor and keep going. Notice that any other change, though, that I've made since then will also be returned to the original state, so if I had made curves or other changes to the image it's going to go right back to the way it was when I opened it. Matter of fact, if I go right up here you can see that one of the objects that I removed is coming back. Obviously I don't want that to happen, so I'll hit Ctrl-Z and undo it. When I hit Ctrl-Z everything that I had done since I last released the mouse returned. So I have to do a bit more work. It's always a good idea to fix an area that's not too big and then release the cursor so that if you make a mistake you don't have to redo quite so much. Obviously it might be helpful to zoom in and work a little bit more closely. You need to be aware that you can only use the History Brush if the Crop Size of the image is the same and the bit depth is the same. If you've cropped the image or changed it from 16 to 8 bit, or vice versa, the History Brush won't work. Also, the Layer that you choose as the source must still be there and be visible for the History Brush to work. In the Tool Options Bar you can specify the Opacity of the brush, and if you decrease it then when you apply the brush part of the change will still be there, and part will be removed. You may find the History Brush particularly helpful if you're experimenting with some creative effects and find that you did something that you liked for part of the image at one time and want a different effect elsewhere. However, you can also achieve similar results by working in Layers and using Layer Masks. We'll talk more about Layer Masks in other movies.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers |
| Author: | Ellen Anon |
| SKU: | 34036 |
| ISBN: | 1-935320-74-2 |
| Release Date: | 2009-09-23 |
| Duration: | 8.5 hrs / 112 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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