Adobe Photoshop CS2 CLASSROOM IN A BOOK [Electronic resources]

Anita Dennis

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Undoing actions in Photoshop

In a perfect world, you'd never make a mistake. You'd never click the wrong item. You'd always perfectly anticipate how specific actions would bring your design ideas to life exactly as you imagined them. In a perfect world, you'd never have to backtrack.

For the real world, Photoshop gives you the power to step back and undo actions so that you can try other options. Our next project provides you with an opportunity to experiment freely, knowing that you can reverse the process.

This project also introduces you to layering, which is one of the fundamental and most powerful features in Photoshop. There are many kinds of Photoshop layers, some of which contain images, text, or solid colors, and others that simply interact with layers below them. The file for this next project has both kinds of layers. You don't have to understand layers to complete this project successfully, so don't worry about that right now. You'll learn more about layers in Lesson 6, "Layer Basics," and Lesson 11, "Advanced Layer Techniques."

Undoing a single action

Even beginning computer users quickly learn to use and appreciate the familiar Undo command. As we will do each time we start a new project, we'll begin by looking at the final result.

Click the Go to Bridge button and navigate to the Lessons/Lesson01/Project3 folder.

Select the 01End3.psd file so that you can see the results you'll achieve in this exercise. After you've studied it in the Preview pane, double-click the 01Start3.psd file thumbnail to open it in Photoshop.

Notice the listings in the Layers palette. The Tie Designs layer is a clipping mask. A clipping mask works somewhat like a selection in that it restricts the area of the image that can be altered. With the clipping mask in place, you can paint a design over the man's tie without worrying about any stray brush strokes disturbing the rest of the image. The Tie Designs layer is selected, because it's the layer you'll be editing now.

In the toolbox, select the Brush tool (), or press B to select it by its keyboard shortcut.

On the tool options bar, click the Brushes tab in the palette well to temporarily open the Brushes palette.

Scroll down the list of brushes and select the Soft Round 35-pixel brush. (The name will appear as a tooltip if you hover the pointer over a brush.)

If you want to try a different brush, that's OK, but select a brush that's reasonably close to 35 pixelspreferably between 20 and 50 pixels.

Move the pointer over the image so that it appears as a circle with the diameter you selected in Step 5. Then draw a stripe anywhere in the yellow tie. You don't have to worry about staying within the lines, because the brush won't paint anything outside the tie clipping mask.

Oops! Your stripe may be very nice, but the design calls for dots, so you'll need to remove the painted stripe.

Choose Edit > Undo Brush Tool, or press Ctrl-Z (Windows) or Command-Z (Mac OS) to undo the Brush tool action.

The tie is again a solid yellow color, with no stripe.

Lesson 10, "Vector Drawing Techniques," and in Lesson 11, "Advanced Layer Techniques."

Undoing multiple actions

The Undo command reverses only one step. This is a practicality because Photoshop files can be very large, and maintaining multiple Undo steps can tie up a lot of memory, which tends to degrade performance. However, you can still step back through multiple actions using the History palette.

Using the same Brush tool settings, click once over the (unstriped) yellow tie to create a soft dot.

Click several more times in different areas on the tie to create a pattern of dots.

Using the History palette tab, drag it from its palette group to a position next to the other palettes. Then, drag down the lower right corner of the History palette to expand it so that you can see more steps. (This isolating and resizing is only for convenience.)

You can also expand the History palette by clicking the minimize/maximize button (Windows) or the green zoom button (Mac OS) on the palette title bar. This resizes the palette so that all the current history states are in view.

The History palette records the recent actions you've performed in the image. The current state is selected, at the bottom of the list.

Click one of the earlier actions in the History palette, and examine the changes this causes in the image window: Several previous actions are undone.

In the image window, create a new dot on the tie with the Brush tool.

Notice that the History palette has removed the dimmed actions that had been listed after the selected history state and has added a new one.

Choose Edit > Undo Brush Tool or press Ctrl-Z (Windows) or Command-Z (Mac OS) to undo the dot you created in Step 5.

Now the History palette restores the earlier listing of dimmed actions.

Select the state at the bottom of the History palette list.

The image is restored to the condition it was in when you finished Step 2 of this exercise.

By default, the Photoshop History palette retains only the last 20 actions. This is also a compromise, striking a balance between flexibility and performance. You can change the number of levels in the History palette by choosing Edit > Preferences > GeneralLesson 4, "Retouching and Repairing."

Using a context menu

Context menus are short menus that are appropriate to specific elements in the work area. They are sometimes referred to as "right-click" or "shortcut" menus. Usually, the commands on a context menu are also available in some other area of the user interface, but using the context menu can save time.

If the Brush tool () is not still selected in the toolbox, select it now.

In the image window, right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) anywhere in the image to open the Brush tool context menu.

Context menus vary with their context, of course, so what appears can be a menu of commands or a palette-like set of options, which is what happens in this case.

Select a finer brush, such as the Hard Round 5-pixel brush. You may need to scroll up or down the list in the context menu to find the right brush.

In the image window, use the selected brush to create smaller dots on the tie.

Note

Clicking anywhere in the work area closes the context menu. If the tie area is hidden behind the Brush tool context menu, click another area or double-click your selection in the context menu to close it.

Place additional dots on the tie.

As it suits you, use the Undo command and the History palette to backtrack through your painting actions to correct mistakes or make different choices.

When you finish making changes to your tie design, give yourself a pat on the back because you've finished another project. You can choose File > Save if you want to save your results, or File > Save As if you want to save it in another location or with a different name, or you can close the file without saving.

More about palettes and palette locations

Photoshop palettes are powerful and varied. You rarely would have a project in which you needed to see all palettes simultaneously. That's why they're in palette groups and why the default configurations leave some palettes unopened.

The complete list of palettes appears on the Window menu, with check marks by the names of the palettes that are open at the front of their palette groups. You can open a closed palette or close an open one by selecting the palette name on the Window menu.

You can hide all palettes at onceincluding the tool options bar and toolboxby pressing the Tab key. To reopen them, press Tab again.

You already used the palette well when you opened the Brushes palette for Project3. You can drag palettes to or from the palette well. This is convenient for bulky palettes or ones that you use only occasionally but want to keep handy.

Other actions that you can use to arrange palettes include the following:

To move an entire palette group, drag the title bar to another location in the work area.

To move a palette to another group, drag the palette tab into that palette group so that a black highlight appears inside the group, and then release the mouse button.

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To dock a palette in the palette well on the tool options bar, drag the palette tab into the palette well so that the palette well is highlighted.

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Expanding and collapsing palettes

You can also resize a palette to see more or fewer of the available options it contains, either by dragging or clicking to toggle between preset sizes.

To change the height of a palette, drag its lower right corner.

To expand a palette to show as much as possible of its contents, click the minimize/maximize button (Windows) or the zoom button (Mac OS). Click a second time to collapse the palette group.

A. Windows B. Mac OS

To collapse a palette group so that only the title bar and tabs are visible, double-click a palette tab or palette title bar. Double-click again to restore it to the expanded view.

Notice that the tabs for the various palettes in the palette group and the button for the palette menu remain visible after you collapse a palette.

NoteYou cannot resize the Color, Character, and Paragraph palettes.

Special notes about the toolbox and tool options bar

The toolbox and the tool options bar share some characteristics with the other palettes:

You can drag the toolbox by its title bar to a different location in the work area. You can move the tool options bar to another location by dragging the grab bar at the far left end of the palette.

You can hide the toolbox and tool options bar.

However, there are other palette features that are not available or do not apply to the toolbox or tool options bar:

You cannot group the toolbox or tool options bar with other palettes.

You cannot resize the toolbox or tool options bar.

You cannot dock the toolbox in the palette well. (The same is true for the tool options bar, because the palette well appears on the tool options bar.)

The toolbox and tool options bar do not have palette menus.