Exingo,
There’s the art history brush too.
In regards to the history brush, it’s a nifty way to repair edits, and you can vary opacity and other parameters like a regular brush. So it’s kind of like saying "Paint brush – it puts paint on the canvas. Is that all you can do with it?"
In a way, "yes". Different tools for different purposes, I guess.
I guess what I am confused by is the option to set a source with the History Palette.
Does setting this source indicate that when painting with the history brush it will not reveal anything from the past history steps prior to that place where you check?
Thanks.
Not quite sure what you mean. But here’s a quick idea. Let’s say you’re trying to colorize a b/w photo and you paint Ellen’s lips red. But your hand isn’t too steady, so you go over the edges a bit. You could use the eraser tool if you’re on a separate layer. But what if you’re not? Simply set the history brush to any previous state – I usually use a snapshot. Then you can use it to clean up the edges of her lips.
Or, as a wild example. You use Lighting effects filter which is a destructive edit. You like the filter, but there’s a portion you don’t want. Set the history brush to the state just before and brush out what you don’t want.
Or maybe you’ve done a great blur, but you want to sharpen the subject only. Set the history brush to a previous point in time lighten the opacity on the brush, and gradually paint your subject until it’s somewhere between what it was before the blur, and what is is after the blur.
Think of it like a cloning tool that uses a specific state of the image at a particular point in time, as its source.
So the part I am not clear on is what if you do not set a previous point in time prior to using the history brush? What if you just paint over part of an image with the history brush without setting a point in the history palette? It seems to do the same thing to me.
Thanks for all of your help!
The default state of the history brush is the opening snapshot – assuming you have that enabled in the preferences.
But do this. Blur your image real bad. Take a snapshot. Then do a Find Edges filter. Put the history brush at the snapshot you took. Now paint with it. Now, change the history brush to the opening snapshot and paint with it. See?
does it just go back in history over the selected area that you paint?
Exactly.
You have the option to paint back the areas you want.
Try this: Hit Ctrl+J this makes a copy of the layer or background. Blur it. Now use the Eraser and erase. This is what it basically does.
History goes back in full steps of every single step you do.
