P: Lightroom: consolidate/flatten/merge history steps

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Give us the option to consolidate/merge history steps.

All the little adjustments with the crop tool (it's often impossible to reach the final crop in a single operation) could be flattened to a single step, all the little stacked basic adjustment tweaks (+5, -7, +3, yada, yada), all the individual brush strokes, etc. could be flattened to a single adjustment.

This would make the history considerably cleaner and simpler - which makes much better use of the limited screen space (scrolling back down through presets and history is a pain).

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

But by your terms, I fake my history.

If I make an adjustment and don't want to keep it I'll probably undo it (rather than making a subsequent adjustment to negate it).

If I make a sequence of micro adjustments, I might roll back to the starting point and apply my final settings as a single set (because I might want to treat another image the same way and I don't like the magic of sync settings).

The last thing I want to do is discard the visibility of the changes to the image, but I really want to see the changes necessary to deliver the end result (including presets), not the individual steps. Maybe that's not history and we're debating different things.

Do we need an alternative panel?

[areohbee]

"Do we need an alternative panel?" - Nope.

The edit-history list is basically a dump of the edit-history table in the database. Its totally doable to add the feature you've requested to the existing edit-history list. But here I go infringing on Adobe territory again - sorry.

[areohbee]

"Do we need an alternative panel?" - Nope.

The edit-history list is basically a dump of the edit-history table in the database. Its totally doable to add the feature you've requested to the existing edit-history list. But here I go infringing on Adobe territory again - sorry.

[john beardsworth]

What Lightroom could do, for example, is *display* the current adjustment status in terms of differences from the default - that was partly why Lee Jay pointed you to the other thread. I think there's some value in that, and the data to do so is already in the catalogue. It's just a matter of calculating and displaying it.

How would you propose summarising local adjustment brush activity?

[john beardsworth]

What Lightroom could do, for example, is *display* the current adjustment status in terms of differences from the default - that was partly why Lee Jay pointed you to the other thread. I think there's some value in that, and the data to do so is already in the catalogue. It's just a matter of calculating and displaying it.

How would you propose summarising local adjustment brush activity?

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I'd merge the individual brush strokes to the mask displayed with the associated pin - again, it's the resultant mask I care about, not the stokes made to create it.

Slightly simpler with grads in the sense that each grad would remain discrete, but any adjustments to the effect applied would be consolidated to a single change (as if the adjustments had be set before applying the grad and it had been applied in its final location/width/etc)

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I'd merge the individual brush strokes to the mask displayed with the associated pin - again, it's the resultant mask I care about, not the stokes made to create it.

Slightly simpler with grads in the sense that each grad would remain discrete, but any adjustments to the effect applied would be consolidated to a single change (as if the adjustments had be set before applying the grad and it had been applied in its final location/width/etc)

[Mark Sirota]

Consolidating them for display only is a clever idea. It would meet my need.

[Mark Sirota]

Consolidating them for display only is a clever idea. It would meet my need.

[Mark Sirota]

That's not complete enough for my tastes -- if I make some other change between crop adjustments, then I have two crop adjustments in the list, which I'd prefer not to have.

[Mark Sirota]

That's not complete enough for my tastes -- if I make some other change between crop adjustments, then I have two crop adjustments in the list, which I'd prefer not to have.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I proposed a similar idea giving the user the option to look at a collapsed history. The idea is to allow both a chronological view (current) and an "essential/logical" view on the history.

I believe there is value in supporting multiple views on the edit history. The chronological (current) one is good for retrospective retracing of the history of edits. It is not good for providing access to (and allowing modification of) edit actions for future editing. The latter is better supported by a logical ordering which is usefully combined with a collapsing of edits to logical groups (e.g., combining brush strokes to the masks/edit-pins they belong to) and potentially even elimination (e.g., of back and forth fiddling with with certain sliders).

[luxBorealis]

Allow users to select a set of histories and right-click > "Collapse". That way, is I have a dozen or two "Add Brush Stroke" for a single mask, I can collapse them into 1. If the user should want, there should be an "Expand" option, too.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I had proposed a "collapsed" or "essential" edit history before. That feature request distinguished between "chronological" and "essential" views of history steps. If both views were available, I believe everyone in this thread would be pleased.

I think there is some good discussion about potential features (such as optional timestamps) in this thread.

[davidgp_wnc]

I like the idea of some form of hierachy to group & optionally hide small sequential adjustments of the same tool.

It is also confusing to have develop history of a photo merged with navigation steps in the product. The history of each photo should be independent.

[areohbee]

This plugin allows users to consolidate and/or delete edit history steps:

DevHistoryEditor