History Palette Helps with Workflow

I’ve spent the past few days ignoring the pending articles I have to write and concentrating on a new index layout. I wanted something more in the style of a magazine and though I searched high and low for a WordPress theme that would meet my needs, I did not like any of the options. So I tore the WordPress loop inside and out, dusted off my PHP skills and coded the front page the way I wanted it to be. I still have some minor tweaks and improvements here and there, but it’s a pretty cool piece of work if I do say so myself! Please take a look and let me know what you think!

I’m not even going to pretend like I know all the ins and outs of using the history palette, but over the past week I’ve found using snapshots to be an invaluable improvement to my workflow. In this article, I’ll explain how I used snapshots to work on editing the photo above and how to set up a shortcut to take a snapshot. But first, one needs to know what a snapshot is and how to take one.

What Are Snapshots?

To take a snapshot, you click the little camera icon on the bottom of the history palette: This is going to take a snapshot of your Photoshop Document at that point in time and save it for your reference. Once you’ve saved your snapshot, you can go in a completely different direction with your photo, take more snapshots and revert to any saved snapshot at any time to start over at that point.

Here is an example of my very basic workflow, which is usually repeated many, many times:

1. Make some edits
2. Take a snapshot
3. Flatten the image

To the right is my history palette for the image above. When I take a new snapshot, I name it to indicate the action, texture or general edits applied. This makes it easy for me to go back to any point and take the edits in an entirely different direction.

Naming the snapshot and breaking down the editing into major actions or textures applied also helps me remember exactly what I’ve done. I’ve been trying to include the actions and textures I’m using in my entries and on Flickr and snapshots make that infinitely easier!

This photo didn’t need any basic corrections straight out of the camera, so the first thing I tried was applying “Meadow 3″ from PB’s Kaleidoscope Gallery Collection. Then I took a snapshot, reverted to the original 001.NEF by clicking on its snapshot, and tried “Seagrass 2″.

It’s as simple as that!

Setting up Keyboard Shortcuts

While it’s easy enough to take a snapshot via the history palette, it disrupts the workflow quite a bit if you have to stop what you’re doing to switch to the palette and click on the icon. If you find taking snapshots as useful as I do, you’re probably going to want to assign a keyboard shortcut to perform this.

It’s simple enough to set up, just click Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts from the menu. Make sure the selection is set to “Palette menus” from the “Shortcuts for” drop-down. Then scroll through the menus and expand on History. To the right of the text “New Snapshot”, assign your shortcut key(s). You can use Ctrl, Shift plus most of the keys on the keyboard including F keys. It will warn you if you’re trying to overwrite an existing shortcut. If you know you’ll never use it, go ahead and override.

When you press the buttons you assigned for the shortcut, a new screen will come up asking you to name the snapshot. You could create an action to accept the default name of Snapshot 1, Snapshot 2 and so on, but I actually like the prompt to name the snapshot at its creation.

While you’re here, you might want to set up a shortcut to flatten your image. To do that, change the “Shortcuts for” menu to “Application Menus”, scroll down to Layer and look through the options until you find Flatten, which will be toward the end.

My shortcuts are set to take a new snapshot with Shift + F2 and flatten with F2.

In an upcoming article, I will address various ways I’ve found to improve or organize actions to speed workflow. This includes setting up keyboard shortcuts for actions, using action buttons and colors and organizing your actions into “Favorite” folders. If there’s anything else you want to know about organizing your actions and keeping them straight, please let me know!