P: 'Save with history'

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.

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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Darn. Defeated by the perfect analogy again. Chapeau.

"Go to moon, pick up rock. How hard can that be?"

»» 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.

» 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?

»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?

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!".

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.

PS already does it. Why is a layer different than a history step in this regard? PS could require you to flatten the image or throw away inactive layers to save image size, but it doesn't because that would be dumb. I said "relatively" trivial, given the programming army behind PS. But PS already writes a history step to memory. What's so hard about writing that step to disk, then restoring it upon open? It would not have to restore the entire contents of OS memory, just whatever that document is using. Of course file size would go up, but I suspect by far less than some are suggesting. Most picture files would have several dozen history steps, max. PS allows you to set up to 1000 steps.