Using the Edit History in metadata

[OldNick]

Something I did not know was that all the history seems to be embedded when you save, at least, I assume if you save as pspimage format.

Can that history be used in any way, to be actually undone, or placed in the current session's history? The only video tute I found about it said it could be used to repeat stuff or demonstrate how the final image was achieved.

Thanks for any help.

[LeviFiction]

The history is just a text representation of what actions have been performed on the image and cannot be used to undo anything as it contains none of the undo data. Undo data contains copies of image data after certain tasks have been completed. This data is necessary to use Undo as most edits are destructive in nature. It would also make the image very large to include undo data inside the image.

No, with history data at most you can follow it like a recipe for re-creating the image from scratch or know what you did at certain points.

[OldNick]

OK. Thanks for that. What you say makes sense in that the file would become huge if every step was saved. I guess it would be like adding a new layer for every change, or saving a new copy every time?

I just sort of feel that there has to be a way to use the history from past sessions....

[hartpaul]

There is, but you have to think ahead. When you have finished operations on an image Save the history as a script.

[OldNick]

OK. Back .

In the context of making changes to an image, and then Saving aAs....PSP then drops the original...and all its session history, and makes the altered image the current one. This can be a pest. I can see how your idea would apply here, in that I could save the history from that session as a script, undo it all and save the script. So then we have the original before editing and a script that will alter it. Then we could open the image as was, run the script, then save as the altered version. Maybe this is what I am looking for; an auto way to do that for each image. In each session, any save would save the unaltered image, plus its saved history script. Or instead of saving as only having the altered image on view, we could have both the altered image and the original, complete with retained edit history in that session.

As you may see I have an idea, but I am struggling to express it...

[LeviFiction]

You don't need to Undo the history, just don't overwrite the original. In fact, you can make this very simple by never saving the image. At each point where you would normally save, simply save out the history as a script from the history palette. It doesn't appear this can be automated, the Save History To Script command requires a command be selected in the history palette first. And I can't find a command that lets you do that so it must be manual.

But here's the idea

1) Open image
2) Make edits
3) When you're done don't save the image, instead open the History Palette, select all of the commands, then save as a script.

When you're ready to edit some more

1) Open original image
2) Run script you saved for this image
3) Make more changes
4) When it comes time to save, save the history as a second script, this history will include running the first script so you'll need to keep both scripts.

Then for ever subsequent edit/save you simply open the original image, and run the most recently saved script which will run all of the others as their first act. At some point this just gets tedious to wait for the image to perform all of the edits so there will come a time when you're ready to drop all edits made an simply save the result. When that time comes, save the image.

[OldNick]

You are right! Yeah that was what I meant, or something very like it but yeah, more complex. But that takes a bit of mucking about that is not "in my workstream of creativity" (I mock, but it is true). It would be nice if this could be done automatically and managed by PSP. So not a command, but _management_ by PSP: basically it would do what you describe when you asked to save, or whatever and look after script naming and attachment to an image.

This of course would be impractical except for an image that really mattered, I reckon, because if you had to run a history script every time you opened an image. Some commands take quite a bit of time.

[wsmyth]

Impractical?

Here is my opinion...

I love PaintShop Pro 2018. I love that I only have to pay for it once. I do not need to pay for it every month, forever.

At least two other photo editing programs save all of your edits between sessions automatically: Picasa and Lightroom. I had used Picasa for Windows for the last ten years, and it saved all the edits after the file is saved, and after the program is closed. Alas, Picasa is no longer supported by Google.

Lightroom does the same. When the file is edited, all the edits are stored in the file, and can be undone and redone before or after the program is closed.

This is not impractical, just not implemented. This is a major drawback of PaintShop Pro. It is not a deal breaker for me, but it certainly is close to being so. Please fix this Corel. Your program is too good to not have this feature. I would pay an upgrade fee to get it.

[OldNick]

OK. Yeah. I can see that if the image is stored saved and you only needed to go therough every step IF you wanted to revert, then that would be practical.

I was meaning impratctical in that, if the image was not saved as changed, but saimply as the "native" image, then every time you opened it, there would have to be a "rebuild" to bring it up to the end of last session. That copuld take time unless ervry change was saved as an image.

I agree that other apps are storing shots "up to date", but allowing for regression if required, the PSP should as well.

[MarkZ]

Impractical?

Here is my opinion...

I love PaintShop Pro 2018. I love that I only have to pay for it once. I do not need to pay for it every month, forever.

At least two other photo editing programs save all of your edits between sessions automatically: Picasa and Lightroom. I had used Picasa for Windows for the last ten years, and it saved all the edits after the file is saved, and after the program is closed. Alas, Picasa is no longer supported by Google.

Lightroom does the same. When the file is edited, all the edits are stored in the file, and can be undone and redone before or after the program is closed.

This is not impractical, just not implemented. This is a major drawback of PaintShop Pro. It is not a deal breaker for me, but it certainly is close to being so. Please fix this Corel. Your program is too good to not have this feature. I would pay an upgrade fee to get it.

I've used Picasa (and still do) but not Lightroom so I don't know its capabilities. Another program that saves edits is Corel's AfterShot Pro. The latter saves edits as separate XMP files. In all cases the edits have to do with "small" changes such as cropping, light levels and perhaps application of built-in effects.

In my opinion PSP is in a different class and it would be totally impractical to save all the editing that can be done within PSP given that it could include brush strokes, cloning, vector tools such as text and lines. When I want to save the steps I've taken in building an image I save it as .pspimage. That way, if I had planned what I was doing I can isolate many steps as a layer and can modify major work steps while leaving others as originally created.