7 History Palette
Used for multiple
undo, and history painting
Grouped with the Layers, and Channels palette
In the default arrangement, this one will be in the group which is third from the top in your column of palettes. If it is hidden behind the Actions palette, click on its title tab to bring it to the front, or choose Window > Show History.
The History palette allows multiple undo for as many steps backward as you have chosen in the History states box in General Preferences. This is found at Edit > Preferences > General. See the illustration at the bottom of this page. The maximum number of steps you can set this to is only limited by your system’s memory. The default setting is twenty steps.
If you want to save a particular step, or state, for the duration of an editing session, make a snapshot. To create a snapshot, select a state, and click the New Snapshot button at the bottom of the History palette (#5 in the illustration below). Enter a name for the snapshot. You can choose from three options 1) Full Document to copy all layers 2) Merged Layers to save a merged copy, or 3) Current Layer to copy only the currently selected layer. Then click OK.
You can refer back to, or take a look at the snapshot at any time. If, however, you make an edit while that snapshot is selected, all history states currently listed after it in the History palette are lost unless you have selected the Allow Non-Linear History option.
If you have made a mistake in your editing, or painting and want to go back, or undo it, simply click on the state in the History palette to which you want to return. You can step back and forth if you want to look at before and after. Once you make any changes from an earlier state, however, all states that were after that one in the history are deleted.
A new document can be created from any state in the History palette. You can either drag that state to the New Document button at the bottom of the History palette (#4 in the illustration below), or select the state and then click the New Document button.
All history states, and snapshots are lost when you close an image.
There are many more features available in the History palette. See the Adobe manual, or online Help for more details.
Please note that this entire palettes section has been updated from a Photoshop 6 version (which was updated from a 5.5 version). Wherever the palette is essentially the same as it was in 6, I have continued to use the screen capture illustrations made using that version. So if you notice cosmetic discrepancies in the illustrations, that's why. In all instances where features were added or changed, I have made new screen captures.
In the illustration below you see the History palette with numbers
added for ID purposes. The numbered items are:
1) The snapshot automatically created when the image was opened if you
have not deselected this option in the palette options menu. The option
is chosen by default.
2) A second snapshot created later to save a particular state. The icon
at the extreme left is that of the history
brush. If you click in any of the grayed out squares on the left side
of the palette, that brush icon would appear, and that would be the state
from which the history brush would paint.
3) This is the last state in the history sequence, and is indicated by
the blue selection color, and the little pointer at its left side. To
select a history state, click on the name, or wide stripe to the right,
and not the gray box on the left. The gray box is for selecting a state
for painting with the history brush.
4) the New Document button which creates a new, separate document from
the selected state.
5) the New Snapshot button
6) the Delete, or Trash button.
Below, top is the History palette options menu, found by clicking the little arrow at the top right corner of the palette.
If you choose History Options from that menu, you would then see the box shown at middle below where various palette options can be selected. You can choose Allow Non-Linear History which means you can edit an earlier state without losing the states that came after it. Those states no longer appear in the image, but they remain available if you change your mind and want to go back to them, or wish to use them as a source for any of the tool that use history states, such as the History Brush.
The illustration at the very bottom is from the General Preferences dialog box where the maximum number of undo states can be chosen. This used to be found in the History palette Options menu, but has been moved, in Photoshop 6.0, to General Preferences, found at Edit > Preferences > General.
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