Photoshop History - Explained?

[Mr. Pickles]

Photoshop has been criticized for some "history" in-abilities, but that doesn't mean there are none. So what do you do if you want to know more about what you did inside Photoshop?

This bit of an educational rant may help you understand what is there, and what is possible. This should be true in PSCS and above. If you have lower, or PSE, let us know if this is possible.

Once inside Photoshop, in the Edit menu, there is an option for Preferences - General. Once you go there, you will see a screen that looks like the one below. On your version, the part with a RED line around it may be faint and gray. Click the check box beside "History Log" and it will all be enabled.

History1.jpg

There are choices for "Save Log Items To:", as you can see. You can attach the data with your Metadata, a Text File, or Both. For ease of looking and checking, I choose Text File as shown. Choosing this allows you to use the Choose button to specify a file and location for your history.

In the "Edit Log Items" drop-down list, you will see Sessions Only, Concise, and Detailed. Quick explanation is the farther down the list you go, the more data you will get.

Sessions Only will only log when image files and Photoshop are opened and closed. Nothing exciting, but shows date and time of open/close, so you do have a time stamp of how long it was open. An example of this file is below:

------------------------------------------------------------

2007-04-28 15:09:50 File PB230196.JPG opened
2007-04-28 15:10:16 File PB230196.JPG closed
2007-04-28 15:10:17 Photoshop quit

------------------------------------------------------------

Concise gives a bit more info. In the example below, you can see what steps were done to the image. You still get a time stamp on each image and on PS itself. Might help you to know what you did, and how long it took to do stuff. This might be the best option, as it gives more info, but not too much.

------------------------------------------------------------
2007-04-28 15:10:56 Photoshop launched
2007-04-28 15:11:29 File PB230196.JPG opened
Rectangular Marquee
Crop
2007-04-28 15:11:41 File PB230196.JPG closed
2007-04-28 15:11:42 Photoshop quit
------------------------------------------------------------

Detailed gives the most information. As you can see in the example below, Detailed still shows the timestamps images were open and closed. It still shows the steps that were done. But look below the Rectangular Marquee step, and you can see even more detail on what was done. In this example, it shows the actual size and location of the marquee. Might be a lot of help for some users, but it might be too much information for others.

------------------------------------------------------------
2007-04-28 15:12:11 Photoshop launched
2007-04-28 15:12:30 File PB230196.JPG opened
Open
C:\Working\PB230196.JPG
Rectangular Marquee
Set Selection
To: rectangle
Top: 435 pixels
Left: 521 pixels
Bottom: 1311 pixels
Right: 1688 pixels
Crop
Crop
2007-04-28 15:12:42 File PB230196.JPG closed
Close
Saving: no
2007-04-28 15:12:43 Photoshop quit
------------------------------------------------------------

So, there you have it. History Log. It might be a good thing for you to look into. Hopefully this shed some "light" on your photo retouching.

[highbarger]

The history log is not available in PS7... or if it is, I can't find it. Craig

[Kosherpaparazzi]

Thank for the info. I was trying to figure out how to save my history, now i know.

[Mark McCall]

Pickles...
I finally got around to setting up this dialog in PS.
While it won't tell me when the image is actually being worked on...it's far better than nothing.

THANK YOU!!!

[Lee4145]

Mr P, this is a nice feature. So much I still don't know after so long.

It runs as one long, single text document. Is there an easy way to open a new document for a new job or is it a matter of cutting and pasting specific jobs to a new page?

[JDArt]

This is great. Thanks a lot. I never know enough about Photoshop.

[Mr. Pickles]

Originally Posted by Lee4145

It runs as one long, single text document. Is there an easy way to open a new document for a new job or is it a matter of cutting and pasting specific jobs to a new page?

Beats me. I would say that for each "job" (series of images), you could just move the file. PS will create a new one where you told it to.

You could rename the existing one too (like the job number, date stamp, etc) and PS would make a new one...