When working with images, you need a good recording assistant. Through it, you can return to the "past" or "present" state of production as you like. No longer will the entire work be ruined just because one effect fails. In Photoshop, this little assistant is called "Snapshot".
It's a camera-like icon below the history panel. It is an extension of the history recording function and can save some of our operations. When we need to go back to a certain step, just click on the snapshot. And it is not affected by the number of history steps we set. You can easily go back to steps saved a long time ago without worrying about washing out the previous history records with too many operations.
●Used to communicate production results with customers
When we create, we often have multiple ideas. At this time, after making a certain effect, we can click the camera icon to save it as a snapshot, and then continue to work on it. When finally giving a demonstration to a client, you only need to click on each snapshot to switch back and forth between multiple effects. We will save whichever effect the customer likes.
If we don't know the customer's preferences very well, when we finish the preliminary work, we can save it as a snapshot and then work on it. If the customer is not satisfied, we can go back to this snapshot, thus saving the trouble of re-creating it. In short, we can use snapshots as a temporary small warehouse to save work progress.
●Save work progress at will
We have changed the image beyond recognition, and now we suddenly need a pre-production background image for synthesis. What should we do? We can save a snapshot of the current work progress, and then click on the previous history step to copy the background image Finally, click the snapshot back and paste it out. This kind of work step gives me the feeling of working in collaboration with my previous self.
In addition, snapshots can also become the "source" of the history brush. We click in the small box in front of snapshot 1 (as shown in the picture) and set it as the "source". At this time, use the history brush to smear on the picture. Restore the part of the image to the snapshot. Using this method, we can even omit the mask and use only one layer to perform simple composition and color correction work.
Snapshots also have limitations. They will occupy certain system resources, so do not set too many snapshots. In addition, after we close the file, the snapshot disappears, so we need to develop good habits. For more complex work, we need to save more disks, or even use multiple files to save the work progress. Remember, the fruits of your labor are far more important than disk space.