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Participating Frequently
March 9, 2012
Open for Voting

P: 'Save with history'

  • March 9, 2012
  • 37 replies
  • 3734 views

In the save dialog in photoshop, you can check or uncheck: 'layers', 'as a copy' and some other options.

It would be nice if you could also check 'with history', to preserve your history while closing or sending a file.

In that way, other people that open your file can see the steps you've made, and you can get back to how you started a year after your project is finished.

It takes up some more space of course, maybe the application can show you how much of a difference in MB's it would take.

37 replies

Inspiring
April 30, 2016
Well there is the problem. Now they can find a solution and make everyone happy. But just to ignore it (and it is an issue that can be solved) is lazy.
Inspiring
April 30, 2016
No, Photoshop history is not a history of commands - Photoshop is not a metadata editor.
History in Photoshop is a lot of pixel data (which is why it takes up so much scratch disk space), plus some metadata.  No, it cannot simply be played back -  Photoshop is not that simple, and the file really would be huge.
Inspiring
April 30, 2016

Simply because I detest the troll thinking that some people allow themselves to fall into, I wanted to contribute that I think it is ABSURD to negate something that could be so useful to a significant majority of users simply because you find a particularly distasteful (i.e. large file size) attribute about it.  

Hell, since it is simply a history of commands, Adobe could simply have Photoshop rerun the commands when the file opens if said user opts for that annoyance.  If that is their desire and need, there is little reason not to allow it.  It would be THEIR time wasted (not wasted in their view) and the file would be the same size as they had before.

 


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Inspiring
August 4, 2014
Darn. Defeated by the perfect analogy again. Chapeau.
Inspiring
July 29, 2014
"Go to moon, pick up rock. How hard can that be?"
Inspiring
July 29, 2014
»» I'll retract the word "trivial",«
»Well, that would seem to be something.
Now I'm tempted to retract my retraction.

»really insufficiently clear?
Yes. This is a generic statement which could apply, in its essence, to any number of applications. History is in storage already before the document is closed, it can be moved to different storage. Whatever method is used to match up data structures in memory can be replicated in the saved file.
Saved layers max: 8000
Saved history states max: 0
There. That's clear.

I've been roped into training Photoshop a few times. Lack of history saving has come up many times, with the same reaction every time: "Wha?".

Let's let this one go. Clearly, you feel the feature is not important enough, or too difficult, to implement. And I don't.
c.pfaffenbichler
Community Expert
Community Expert
July 20, 2014
» I'll retract the word "trivial",«
Well, that would seem to be something.

»but I have not been given any contradictory evidence, just blanket statements.«
So is the statement
»What's difficult is matching up all the thousands of data structures that make up a document and it's history states and making them work correctly again after reloading.«
really insufficiently clear?
c.pfaffenbichler
Community Expert
Community Expert
July 20, 2014
»But such experience is not required to see that if an application can provide history functionality in the current document, it can save that same history and restore upon reopening.«
Would this at the very least not necessitate a significant change to the psd or rather psb formats as psd’s size limitations would render it pretty close to useless for this?
Inspiring
July 20, 2014
Ah, the ol' Argument From Authority approach. I'll retract the word "trivial", but I have not been given any contradictory evidence, just blanket statements. I've not argued the file would not be bigger, but define "huge". An order of magnitude larger? For, say, a file with 50 history states? If the history states are matched up in memory before closing, why not exactly replicate them in memory again? If you can output all the steps to a log, why not just replay it? I do not know the method by which a single history state is stored (e.g. using deltas or compression), but if PS can save up to 8000 layers, it would seem feasible to save some fraction of that from the history. My raw photos are roughly 30MB. If I do lots of work on them, they may balloon to 200MB. If saving the history with important files bloats them to 2GB, I'm OK with that. It's obviously a feature lots of people want. Heck, turn it off by default. And if people use it, warn them: "Yer file is gonna get huuuggge!".
Inspiring
July 19, 2014
No, Photoshop doesn't do it. History saves the state of the entire document, not just a layer.

Now, I actually know the implementation, and the math, and am telling you that the file sizes would be huge. (and many users use all 1000 history states - and would want more if they were stored in a file for later use!)

What's difficult is matching up all the thousands of data structures that make up a document and it's history states and making them work correctly again after reloading.

It is really not that simple - and trying to claim that it is when experienced engineers are telling you that it is not... really doesn't help your case.