Right Out Of “Star Trek”: Non-Linear History

The History palette allows unprecedented control of your Photoshop file while you’re working on it—if you don’t like the last ten filters you used, just remove them from the history! But what if you only want to remove the first of those ten filters? That’s when the concept of “non-linear history” comes in, and if you haven’t used it before you will now.

Non-linear history allows you to undo commands you executed, without undoing any commands that came after it. If you’re not familiar with the History palette, think of it as being able to undo the command you used ten commands ago. The key to this is in the History palette’s flyout menu (see the image above): check “Allow For Non-Linear History” and from then on you can select specific steps in the History palette and delete them without losing the ones below it.

I don’t use non-linear history all the time, because I am usually needing to remove entire blocks of history steps, but when I do need to undo a particular move this is very helpful.

A final note to those who were not familiar with the History palette: start using it now! It will change the way you work with Photoshop.