Adobe Photoshop CS5 Tutorials
Photoshop Productivity Techniques / Undoing Steps with History pt. 2
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Subtitles of the Movie (Adobe Photoshop CS5 / Photoshop Productivity Techniques / Undoing Steps with History pt. 2)
OK, now that we've applied some commands to our image how can we now use History to step backwards in time and perhaps undo some of these effects? Well, it's actually really easy as it turns out, thankfully. What we can do here is if I want to get rid of the Brightness-Contrast command and go back to Angled Strokes, all I need to do is just single click on Angled Strokes and that removes the Brightness-Contrast. Or, I could go even further back in time by clicking on Dry Brush and that takes me all the way back to how my image looked after I applied the Dry Brush effect, right? So, the way that the History Panel is organized here is we have the beginning of the timeline, if you will - well, I kind of think of it as a timeline anyway - at the top and the ending of the timeline or the current location on the timeline, if you will, at the bottom of the Palette. So you know what I could do is I could use the History Palette for a couple of neat techniques. For example, maybe I want to get sort of a before and after look at my image after I apply some Color Correction or after I apply some effects, so here I'm on Brightness-Contrast again, I stepped forward in time just by clicking on the last History State as it's known, all of these blocks here are known as History States, or History Steps, if you will. So I'm all the way forward in time and what I want to do is I want to do this sort of before and after comparison so what I'll do is I'll click on the very first guy in the History Palette, this guy here, Barn1.jpg and that takes me all the way back to how my image looked when I first opened it. This guy at the top here is what's referred to as a Snapshot. Kind of something that I want you to keep in the back of your mind just for a moment, but I click on this Snapshot at the top of the History Panel, this is how my barn looked when I first opened it. Then what I could do is I could click back on the last History State, or the last History Step, here's my After. So, quite literally, Before and After. Before and After. Just like that and I go, oh, I don't know if I like it or not, or maybe I should back up a couple of steps, you know, this sort of thing, right? So you can do a lot of cool things here. You can step forward and backward in time, one step at a time, by using Keyboard Shortcuts. So give this a try. On the Windows side hold down Alt and Ctrl, on the Mac side here I'm going to hold down Option and Cmd and then hit your Z key on your keyboard and that will step you backward in time and you can see inside my History Panel that the States are reverting back to the previous stateright? So again, Ctrl and Alt on the Windows side, Cmd and Option here on the Mac. Now, if you want to step forward in time using your keyboard try this. On the Windows side hold down Ctrl and Shift, here on the Mac I'll hold down Cmd and Shift and then hit the Z key on your keyboard and that will allow you to step forward in time. OK, I've got to show you a couple of other neat things here. Let's say for example that I'm really happy with where things are looking here, with the last State here, the Brightness-Contrast. What I can do is I can save this position in my document. Let's say I'm working along on my image, maybe again, applying some effects or some color correction and I get to a point where I really like it but I might still tinker a little bit with the image. Well, I can save the current state, if you will, of my image, I can save it as this thing called a Snapshot. How do I do that? Well, what I'm going to do is I'm going to head up to the History Palette Menu in the top right corner and I'm simply going to choose New Snapshot and I get a dialog box here, the New Snapshot dialog box. You can throw a name in there if you want. I'm just going to leave the default here and I'll go ahead and click on OK and then now at the top of the History Palette we now have two Snapshots: the first guy there, the default, Barn1 and then Snapshot1. So, again, I can do this Before and After comparison if I want, which is kind of cool. So there you go. You can always save your History States as Snapshots, which is great. Now, a few other little tidbits that I want to bounce off you here related to History. I'm going to go all the way down to Brightness-Contrast here, the very last History State and then once again, from the History Menu what I'm going to do is I'm going to pop open the History Palette Menu I should say and then this time I'm going to choose New Document. And what this will do is this will create a new Photoshop file based on the current History State that I have selected here inside the History Palette. So, once again, back to the History Panel Menu there, I went and got out of mine, and I'll choose New Document and now I have a new file inside Photoshop. There are no History States, except this Default1 here, the duplicate state here and it's a completely new file that I can continue working on if I want. And the original Barn1.jpg is still open in the background, just click on your Document Tab there, you can see all the History States are there inside the History Palette all intact, which is awesome. I hope you're enjoying this. I hope you're really going to use History a lot. I use History a whole heck of a lot because I'm always making mistakes. Anyway, I hope this is all good for you here. I want to bounce one more thing off of you, kind of related to the issue of Undoing and he's kind of related to History as well, he's called Reverting, and I'll show you that really quickly in the next exercise.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Adobe Photoshop CS5 |
| Author: | Geoff Blake |
| SKU: | 34150 |
| ISBN: | 1-936334-46-1 |
| Release Date: | 2010-08-06 |
| Duration: | 7.5 hrs / 95 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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