Many Photoshop enthusiasts use the History panel simply to undo earlier steps of a process. This is super useful, but the History panel is no one-trick pony. When combined with the History Brush tool, you’ve got a powerful ally in your imaging tasks.

The History panel records all of your steps. Just click on an item to revert to that step of your process.

The History panel and History Brush work together to restore specific parts of an image. For example, you can apply a Gaussian Blur to an entire image, then History Brush the focal point so it’s unblurred—great for a depth of field effect.

A similar technique is used to create an antique-like hand-coloring effect on photos. As I walk through it below, you may notice that this is a “destructive” process creating permanent results, unlike Adjustment Layers. But it’s also a very quick process, and should give you some more ideas about what the History panel and History Brush tool can do.

1) Start things off with a photo that has a clear focal point, and one that would be easy to paint unless you are very deft with brushes. I’m using a photo of a group of flowers. The goal will be to make the image black and white, then recolor the main flower softly.

The main flower is a nice focal point and should be easy to brush because it doesn’t have any fine details.

2) I make some tweaks to the size and contrast of the image to get started, then I take a Snapshot of it in the History panel.

Clicking the camera icon in the History panel takes a Snapshot of the current image state. Later, when we make more changes and undo them with the History Brush, they will revert to this snapshot.

The Snapshot is created and selected (blue), and the History Brush icon is turned on.

Even if you don’t intend to use the History Brush tool in the future, it can be really handy to save Snapshots of your work as you proceed through a project. Just click a Snapshot to jump back to that recorded state of the image.

3) With the Snapshot selected and the History Brush icon turned on in the History panel, we’ll make the image black and white. If you’re using Photoshop CS3, it’s recommended that you use the Black and White adjustment (Image > Adjustments > Black and White) which gives you more control than Desaturate. If you must use Image > Adjustments > Desaturate, do a little contrast adjusting after so you’ve got a strong image.

Using Black and White desaturates the image and lets me make adjustments so I have a high contrast result.

4) Now choose the History Brush tool and start painting your focal point. You’ll immediately see the “old” image show through.

To really make this look like the old-fashioned hand-coloring effect (done on photo prints with translucent paints, chalks, or pencils), use a soft brush and reduce its opacity somewhat (I like about 50%) in the options bar.

Overlap strokes in areas you wish to make more intense.

If you’d like to select your focal point before brushing, be sure to feather the selection so you don’t have any hard edges between the black and white areas and color areas.

Experiment with different brush tips and painting techniques to give the black and white image an antique look.

The finished piece

Hand coloring looks great on nature photos, and is also commonly used for portraits, softly brushing in pink cheeks and bright eyes on a black and white photo of a child for example. And more importantly, this technique demonstrates one of the many things you can do with the powerful History panel and History Brush tool.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 28th, 2007 at 4:29 pm and is filed under Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.