Saving history / snapshots in CS3

Dave Clee

Is there a way to save the snapshots / history with a PSD file in CS3 ??

Cheers

Dave

kdog

Dave Clee wrote:

Is there a way to save the snapshots / history with a PSD file in CS3 ??

Cheers

Dave

Wouldn't that be nice. I was amazed the first time I tried saving as a PSD and discovered that the history was gone. It makes you wonder why the bloody PSD is so huge, and what advantage it has over just saving as a TIFF?

Richard

kdog wrote:

Wouldn't that be nice. I was amazed the first time I tried saving as a PSD and discovered that the history was gone. It makes you wonder why the bloody PSD is so huge, and what advantage it has over just saving as a TIFF?

Does a layered TIFF save masks or blending mode/opacity settings? I would think those are proprietary data.

Although it is not nearly as convenient as the live history, enabling detailed logging can help reconstruct what you have done and does not consume a whole lot of space.

kdog

Richard wrote:

Does a layered TIFF save masks or blending mode/opacity settings? I would think those are proprietary data.

So PSD saves all that stuff? Ok, you're teaching me something here. I use only a very limited set of layer functions and have never thought to save them. Is there such a thing as a "layered TIFF"? I didn't know that either. I thought it was strictly a flat image representation.

Still, it would be nice to be able to checkpoint the exact state of a PS session, so that the history is there without trying to recreate it. It sounds like I'm not alone is getting confused by exactly what the PSD is useful for. Admittedly, I'm a fairly novice PS user. So your insights are helpful as always, Richard.

Cheers,
-joel

Sam

While it can't get you all the history, one thing you can add to your work flow is to use adjustment layers.

As an example if you simply apply levels or curves to your image, and then save it as a psd, or tiff, the adjustments you made are baked into the saved image, and you can't back step, or know exactly what you did.

If you use an adjustment layer it is saved with the psd, or tiff file, and you can open it up exactly where you were when you used it. You can backstop, and or modify from your starting or ending point.

I hope this helps.

Sam

ps: This doesn't add a lot to the file size.

colourbox

The current TIFF format can be used as a complete substitute for the PSD format as far as I can tell. Adobe is able to save layers etc. into TIFF. Some people like to use TIFF so that they know other apps can read it. You might be forced to use something other than TIFF if your file gets to be bigger than TIFF or PSD can support, where you would use PSB instead.

TIFF files with ZIP compression can be smaller than PSD, but the catch is that they take a lot longer to save. If I am impatient, I will save as PSD when frequently saving, then for space savings, archive as layered TIFF when I'm done.

As for saving history/snapshots, the other posts are right on. You can't save history/snapshots, so the more you can encode your edits in nondestructive ways (masks, adjustment layers, Smart Objects, Smart Filters, Smart Objects of raw files) the more you can back yourself out of any edit.

If you use Camera Raw 5.2 in Photoshop/Bridge CS4, you can now save snapshots within Camera Raw (but still not in Photoshop).

Dave Clee

Great replies, I didnt think I could but thought it was worth asking.

Thanks

Dave

pathfinder

Got to Preferences,click on General and the following dialogue box opens up. Check the History Log as shown, and the Edit Log Items as Detailed, and you will have a detailed log of your edits. It will not save snapshots as your work along though. Save the file as a psd, and it will have all layers and alpha channel selections saved as well.