Removing Preview Images of Recent Work

[Jason Burnett]

So the other day I created a couple of images in photoshop where I placed pictures of myself naked except some leather thigh-high boots, armbands, a harness, a captains cap, and a cigar on top of various stock background images. A day later, without thinking about it, I decided to help my father in-law fix some mold on an old photo of his. The photo was taken in 1939 or something and he didn't realize that you could do such a thing. So he wanted to watch. No problem.

Except that when I launched Photoshop, my S&M photos showed up under "recent images" and I cannot find a way to get rid of them. Is there no way to get Photoshop to quit bringing up my business when I don't want it to? I figured you could do something as simple as right-click any images in your "recent images" page and select "remove from recent" from a context menu. Maybe a close box on the preview image? Nope. You can't select a preview without opening it. It's a really really crappy feature of Photoshop.

Imagine if I were working on something proprietary where nobody could see it or I'd lose my job. Well, thanks Photoshop. Sure, embarrassing my father-in-law was pretty bad, but there are a lot of situations where you don't want your recent work to be prominently displayed on your startup page when you launch Photoshop. Please help me resolve this issue. Thanks.

[davescm · Accepted solution]

File > Open Recent > Clear Recent Files list

Dave

[Jason Burnett]

Thanks. So you are saying that other than clearing the recent files list, there is no way to do it?  Rough. I guess I'll submit a feature request. Selectively removing items from your recent list seems basic. Removing all items from my recent list is counter-productive but better than nothing. Thanks again for your help.

[Conrad_C]

JP_Burnout wrote:

Sure, embarrassing my father-in-law was pretty bad, but there are a lot of situations where you don't want your recent work to be prominently displayed on your startup page when you launch Photoshop.

There are a lot of ways to avoid this type of thing in the future, and they might be better than having a selective delete of the Recent list. Because if someone is already looking over your shoulder while Photoshop starts up, you don’t have time to pick and choose individual images, you want to hide all of it right away. Here are a few tips for those needing to immediately hide the Recent list due to proprietary or private images:

• Some users like using the Recent list, but to keep one client from getting a good look at another client’s images, they set Recent to the list view instead of the icon view. The images are still visible as small thumbnails, but that makes the images harder to recognize.
• The Recent list is just one of many panels in the Home screen, so click on any of the panels on the left. For example, if you click Learn before the person over your shoulder realizes what is happening, the Home screen will instantly switch to a screen full of tutorials. That setting sticks across sessions.
• When no document is open, you can choose whether you want to see the Home screen or the Photoshop workspace. You switch to the workspace by clicking the Photoshop icon in the top left corner of the Home screen, so that is another thing you can click if you instantly need to hide the Recent list. If you wish the Home screen would never appear, you can disable “Auto show the Home screen” in Photoshop Preferences > General.
• It turns out (I just discovered this) that the Esc key is a shortcut for clicking the Home icon. So the fastest way to get out of the Recent list is to slam the Esc key as soon as you realize you’re about to show something you shouldn’t, and Photoshop will instantly switch into the workspace.