7 History Brushes
Used for painting
Found at #21 in the Toolbar diagram at left
The history brush, and art history brush are grouped together in the
toolbar. If the one you want is hidden, click on the one which is showing
to find the pop-up menu where the other can be selected.
The history brush tool paints from an earlier, or different ‘state’
of an image onto the current ‘state’ or version of the image.
You can paint from any step found in the History
palette. So, for example, if you made changes to an image, then undid
those changes by clicking an earlier step in the History
palette, you could paint from that state in the “future”
that you just undid provided you have Allow Non-Linear History checked
in the History palettes options (to find options, go to the History palette
menu).
If you choose Edit > Fade immediately after using this tool, you can change the opacity of the strokes you have just applied.
This tool is very similar to the clone stamp, but it works from any state or snapshot available in the History palette, not just the current one.
Please note that this tool copies from one layer to the active layer, not from all layers. The only exception is if you copy from a merged snapshot.
Basic steps to use the tool are 1) specify settings [see below] 2) choose
a brush in the tool’s options bar 3) go to the History
palette and click in the left column of the state you want to paint
from 4) drag to apply the image data from the chosen history state onto
the active layer of the destination image. The state that you have chosen
in the History palette is indicated by a history brush icon at the left
end of that state in the palette.
The history brush is often used by for retouching by applying a heavy filter such as Dust and Scratches or Gaussian Blur, or when using the healing brush or patch tool. After applying those effects, you can restore parts of the picture that you don’t want to be filtered, healed or patched by painting from a state prior to the changes thus blending the old with the new.
A shortcut for changing brush sizes while using this tool is to press the left bracket [ to decrease brush size, and the right bracket ] to choose a larger brush. Shift-right-clicking on your document while using this tool will open the blend mode menu next to your cursor.
The keyboard shortcut for the History brush tool is the letter Y. Hold down the Shift key while pressing the shortcut letter to toggle between the history brush, and the art history brush.
The illustration below, is the history brush’s options bar. To find any tool presets that have been made for this tool, click on the tool’s thumbnail at the left end of the options bar. To reset the tool to its default settings, right-click on the tool’s thumbnail and choose Reset Tool from the menu that appears.
To choose a brush size and type, click on the brush thumbnail. A pop-up
palette of available brushes will appear. Press Enter or click on your
document’s blue title bar to close the palette after you’ve
chosen a new brush. If you want to access the full brushes palette with
its many options, click the brushes palette button at the far right end
of the options bar.
You can also right-click on your document to open the brushes pop-up palette next to the cursor. For more information on brushes, please see the Brushes in 7 tutorial. If you are still using Photoshop 6, find information on the your brushes palette on the old brushes page.
The box titled Mode, and showing Normal is a drop down menu of all the blend modes that can be used when painting with the copied image.
The Opacity slider sets the amount of transparency, if any, in the applied colors. A higher value is more opaque; a lower value is more transparent.
The results of painting a straight stroke with Flow settings at less than 100 % will look the same as when using an identical setting for the Opacity slider. However, if you cross repeatedly over the same spot during a single stroke (without releasing the left mouse button), you’ll see the difference between the two controls. Both limit the amount of color that is applied on the first pass, but color applied with a lowered Flow setting will accumulate to full density within the same stroke if you pass the brush repeatedly over the same area. Color applied with a lowered Opacity setting will not (within a single stroke).
If you want the brush to continue to apply color for as long as the left
mouse button is pressed, even if you are not moving the cursor, click
the airbrush button to activate that option.
If you have doodled with a tool’s options and want to get back to the default settings, right-click that tool’s icon at the far left end of its options bar (in Photoshop 6, left-click). Choose either Reset Tool to reset only the current tool, or Reset All Tools to restore default settings to every tool.
Please note that all descriptions, and illustrations featured refer to files which are in Photoshop’s .psd format, and which are in RGB color mode. Other file formats, and color modes may generate different options. Some Photoshop features are not available for images not in .psd format, or RGB color mode. To find what color mode your image is in, choose Image > Mode.
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