CS4 Adjustment Layers and History

MA
Posted By
Michael_Adler
Nov 22, 2008
Views
325
Replies
4
Status
Closed
I’m having trouble recovering a few things that used to work really well in CS3 and before. How do I do the following in CS4?

1. Control-tab used to cycle through adjustment points in a curve and I could then use arrow keys to move adjustment points around. Control-tab does nothing in CS4 and I don’t see a way to set it with keyboard shortcut settings.

2. In CS3 and earlier I could edit the settings of an adjustment layer and clicking OK would save the changes AND add a history entry. In CS4 it seems that adding the history layer is implicit. Is there a better way than selecting some other layer and going back? I can’t find a keyboard shortcut that adds a history entry (e.g. hitting enter) that is equivalent to clicking OK. The "reset to previous state" button in the adjustment panel seems to hold only the previous state.

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JJ
John Joslin
Nov 22, 2008
You need to look at some of the excellent tutorial videos available via the Help menu.

Plus and Minus keys now cycle through the adjustment points in the Curves dialog and the arrow keys work as before.

It’s too early in the morning to work out what your second question actually means.
M
Mylenium
Nov 22, 2008
In CS4 it seems that adding the history layer is implicit. Is there a better way than selecting some other layer and going back?

No, I don’t think so. It’s a weakness in PS’ undo system that is solely built on tool and state changes, not parameter changes of the tools. Funnily, we as videographers have been doing it like that for eons in After Effects and actually enjoy the interactive palettes. but then again, we have an undo that correctly registers slider changes… 😉

Mylenium
F
Freeagent
Nov 22, 2008
It’s a weakness in PS’ undo system

That would build up history states beyond usefulness for most people. But it could be an option.
MA
Michael_Adler
Nov 22, 2008
Clearly having a new history point at every move of a point on a curve would be too much history. The old system created a history point every time you clicked OK, making it quite obvious when a new checkpoint was saved. The new system is more ambiguous.

Having a key (e.g. "Enter") invisibly break the history chain might be an option. If a point on the curve is moved after hitting "Enter" a new history state would be started.

It would also be useful if the undo button inside the curves palette had more than one state.

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