Working with History and Snapshots in Lightroom
To view History and Snapshots in Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom™, you need to be sure your left panel is visible. History in the left panel as shown in Figure 1 is like the History palette in Adobe Photoshop. It remembers all the adjustments you do as you do them. You can go back to a specific adjustment, although remember, in Lightroom, you don't necessarily need to. All adjustments are non-destructive, so you can always go back and change anything without harming the quality of the image. Adjustments are instructions only until you export a photo.
Figure 1: The History panel appears on the left side of the application window.
History can be helpful in returning to a certain point in your image work or to go back and see what a specific adjustment was. One thing that is quite different about Lightroom's History compared to the one in Photoshop is that Lightroom remembers the history of an image's adjustments so that any time you go back to a photo that has been adjusted, you can quickly check and see what was done. Clearing History removes the record of the adjustments but the adjustments themselves are not affected.
Tip: If you want to know if an image has been adjusted or not, you can quickly see that in the Filmstrip or Grid views. A small +/- icon shows up on all images that have had any adjustment made to them. A crop icon tells you if it has been cropped.
Requirements
To follow along with this article, you will need the following software:
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
Prerequisite knowledge:
None>
About the authors
Rob Sheppard is a professional photographer based in Los Angeles, and author of "Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for Digital Photographers Only," "National Geographic Field Guide to Digital Photography," "The Magic of Digital Nature Photography," and other titles. He is also the editor-at-large for Outdoor Photographer magazine, and regularly conducts workshops around the country to help photographers master digital techniques. His website is at www.robsheppardphoto.com.
Excerpted from "Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for Digital Photographers Only," by Rob Sheppard. Copyright© 2007 Wiley Publishing, Inc. Used with permission of Wiley Publishing, Inc. To purchase the full retail version of this book, visit www.wiley.com.
