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8 6 G R A P H I C S P R O • F E B R U A R Y 2 0 2 3 G R A P H I C S - P R O. C O M T H E D I G I T A L E Y E | S T E P H E N R O M A N I E L L O Stephen Romaniello is an artist and educator who has taught computer graphics since 1990. He is Professor Emeritus and the founder of the Digital Arts program at Pima Community College in Tucson Arizona. Stephen is a certified instructor in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Premier and the author of numerous books, articles and media on the creative use of graphics software. Stephen is the founder and CEO of GlobalEye systems, a company that offers training and consulting in graphics software and creative imaging. Digital Time Machine Working with history W e all make mistakes! It's human nature to err, and I'm sure if we closely examine our lives there are things that we have done that we wish we could erase. Unfortunately, the past is the past and it's best to move on. But what if … Time machine What if we could travel back in time and undo those unpleasant little errors and mis- haps that we regret. Alas, nobody has yet invented the time machine. (I know this because I checked Amazon and looked for one to buy). You can probably guess what I'm about to say next — drumroll! Image editing software programs including Corel PaintShop Pro and Adobe Photoshop both have built in "time machines" that enable us to access any moment in the workflow to make alterations, corrections, and era- sures. Both programs have similar features that allow multiple undos and non-linear editing. Because I'm primarily an Adobe user, I'll demonstrate the History "panel" in Photoshop but rest assured, there are simi- lar features in PaintShop Pro's History "pal- ette." Although the icons and interfaces are a bit different, the end results are essentially the same. B U S I N E S S S T R A T E G I E S Fig. 1. The first course of action is to head straight to the top of the Edit menu and choose Undo. Undoing Let's look at the simplest techniques that instantly reverse unwanted edits. Let's say you are carefully cloning out the blemishes on uncle Herman's portrait. You've had one too many double espressos, and your hand is a bit jittery. You slip and drag a little too far and place a rather unsightly blotch on the tip of his nose. An easily corrected mistake? Yes! e first course of action is to head straight to the top of the Edit menu and choose Undo, (Fig. 1) to instantly revert the image to the moment before you made the ill-fated clone stroke. Better yet, use the key command Cmnd+Z in Mac or Cntrl+Z in Windows. W hen you choose Undo, a new command on the Edit menu appears -Redo, that restores the undone action. You can toggle back and forth between the previous artwork (Undo) and the later (Redo) by selecting the command again, or better yet, use the key command Shift+Cmnd+Z in Mac or Shift+Cntrl+Z in Windows. Pressing these key commands reverses the image sequentially backwards or forwards until the beginning or final state is achieved. An additional command in the Edit menu applies to the undo operations. Toggle Last State, Opt+Cmnd+Z (Mac) or Alt+Cntrl+Z (Win). is operation toggles back and forth between the current state and the state immediately before it. ese key commands are worth remembering because they are among the most frequently used operations. The history of your workflow Imagine a workf low where every com- mand, tool application or menu item that you initiate during your work session is recorded and compiled on a sequential list of history