Use the History Log to Make Photoshop Take Notes For You

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Have you ever finished a complex sequence of steps in Photoshop, and later wished you could remember what those exact steps were? Did you use a distance of 150 or 200 for that Motion Blur? Did you rotate that layer 45° or 30°? Photoshop offers an alternative to jotting all this down on a sticky note, legal pad, or napkin. Photoshop will actually record these notes for you, keeping a detailed account (called a History Log) of each and every command that you perform. Here’s how to set it up:

Choose Preferences > General and select the History Log option. There you can choose to save the Log Items either to Metadata (recommended) or a Text File. If you choose Metadata, the log becomes part of the file you are editing. If you choose Text File, you will be asked for a name and a location in which Photoshop will save a text file containing the log. I use the Metadata option, as I’ve found that the Text File option doesn’t work as well. You also can also choose the level of detail you want Photoshop to record, from Sessions Only (the most basic) to Detailed (this is what I use).

photoshop history log

Once selected, the preference setting will remain in effect, logging every change you make to every file you open, until you return to Preferences and turn it off.

You can view the metadata at any time by choosing File > File Info in Photoshop and choosing the Photoshop category on the left. Here’s an example of what it looks like.

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Since the history log records every click and every brush stroke, you may want to create an Action to make it easy to turn the History Log preference on and off with a single click. That way you can easily turn it on to record only the steps that you want to remember. Here is a set of 2 Photoshop actions that you can download and install that makes this easy. To install the actions, display the Actions panel (Window > Actions) and then choose Load Actions from the panel menu. Note that I’ve assigned the keyboard shortcuts F2 and F3 to turn the History log on and off.

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Any metadata that you log will be saved with the file forever, so there may be times that you want to clear this metadata from the file. This is easy to do, with a little set up required first.

Create a new, blank Photoshop file

Choose File > File Info

In the drop-down list next to Preferences, choose Export

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Save the file with the name “Empty metadata.xmp” in the folder location that Photoshop suggests

Close the Photoshop file without saving

Now, to clear the History Log metadata from any file, just open the file that contains the metadata that you want to clear, choose File > File Info, and select Empty metadata from the drop-down list at the bottom of the dialog.

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When the Import Options dialog appears, choose the “Clear existing properties and replace with template properties” option, and click OK.

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Warning: This will clear all the metadata from the file, such as camera and lens information and GPS data, not just the history log metadata.

Once you have all this set up, this method is a simple-yet-powerful way to document your work in Photoshop.

Keith Gilbert is a design consultant, developer, educator, speaker, and author. His work has taken him throughout North America, Africa, Europe, and Asia. During his 35+ year career his clients have included Adobe, Apple, Target, Oracle, and the United Nations. He is the author of several popular titles for LinkedIn Learning, Adobe Press, and CreativePro. Find him at gilbertconsulting.com and on Twitter @gilbertconsult
  • Peter Altschuler says:

    Be specific. This only applies to Photoshop CC, not earlier versions.

  • Melody Galen says:

    Does it appreciably increase the file size when you keep the history data?

  • Bob Farrigan says:

    Am I missing the link to the actions?

  • Kieth
    The unintended consquence of this article is pointing out a really easy way of removing metadata from an image. This is something we need to do when sharing photographs with information has to be kept confidential. Create a boilerplate information xmp file is on my todo list along with downloading the actions.

  • David Eckels says:

    When I do this, the Photoshop category is greyed out and I cannot scroll the History Log File. Is there a trick to this?

  • Rose says:

    Thank you very much. I’ve been looking for days but never thought to go into the background, so I appreciate your assistance.

  • One unforeseen benefit of this post is that it presents a simple technique for extracting metadata from an image. When exchanging pictures that contain sensitive information, this is a must. It’s on my to-do list to create an informational standardized XMP file and download the necessary steps.

  • Upon doing this, the Photoshop category is inactive, appearing greyed out, and I find myself unable to scroll through the History Log File. Is there a workaround or specific trick for addressing this issue?

    • Keith Gilbert says:

      Hmm. I just checked, and this technique still works for me on Photoshop 2024 vs. 25.1 on macOS. Make sure you are working on a file type that supports XMP metadata, such as a PSD, JPG, TIFF, etc. Some file types don’t support XMP.

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