Undo, Redo and History Panel

[Grimsby User]

Hi, having bought all three Affinity apps this week, I am still very new to them. So in spite many years familiarity of using the older Serif apps, PagePlus, PhotoPlus, etc, here I am asking very basic questions! 

I used Help to discover that the Edit menu offer undo/redo, but I am surprised that these Affinity apps, (well the Publisher one that I am using right now at least), does not have the common undo/redo arrows. Achieving this via a menu instead, (ie. rather than as well if preferred),is rather clumsy. I suspect that such arrows may well be available if enabled and I have yet to find out how to do that - but it is not an option in the Customise Toolbar panel, I've just looked. 

Similarly, Help describes how the History panel functions. But it doesn't tell me where to find it! 

Help would be appreciated. 

[Joachim_L]

Visit menu View >> Studio and check History.

[David in Яuislip]

Aargghhhh, beaten again

[Joachim_L]

3 minutes ago, David in Яuislip said:

Aargghhhh, beaten again

A word of consolation: You were putting more love in your answer.

[iconoclast]

As Dave and Joachim suggest, I work with the History too. But not to forget, you can also use the shortkeys (Ctrl+Z for Undo and Ctrl+Y for Redo).

And also take a look at the Snapshot panel. You can save certain states of the process with it and go back to them with a click, if you want.

[Joachim_L]

1 minute ago, iconoclast said:

And also take a look at the Snapshot panel.

Only available in Affinity Photo / Photo Persona (when Affinity Photo is installed also) and not in Affinity Publisher solely.

[iconoclast]

2 minutes ago, Joachim_L said:

Only available in Affinity Photo / Photo Persona (when Affinity Photo is installed also) and not in Affinity Publisher solely.

And in Designer also. But yes, Publisher doesn't have Snapshots. You're right.

Not to forget that the History can be saved with the documents. In all three Apps. That's a really cool feature, I think.

[Old Bruce]

2 minutes ago, iconoclast said:

Not to forget that the History can be saved with the documents. In all three Apps. That's a really cool feature, I think.

With the caveat that the file size can balloon.

[iconoclast]

1 hour ago, Old Bruce said:

With the caveat that the file size can balloon.

Yes, it is important to know that, not to get into trouble.

[JohnM]

Yes, I also miss the undo/redo arrows on Pageplus.

[Grimsby User]

Hi everyone, thank you very much for your responses. Very helpful.

David - I did tell you in my previous post that I would probably be back here pretty soon with more queries 🤣😆

 

[R C-R]

11 hours ago, iconoclast said:

And in Designer also. But yes, Publisher doesn't have Snapshots.

If you have AP & AD as well as APub, via Studio Link APub supports Snapshots in both its Designer & Photo Personas. The Photo Persona even supports the Undo Brush Tool.

Olivio Sarikas has an excellent video explaining how to use the Snapshot panel & the Undo Brush Tool together.

[Grimsby User]

Thank you R C-R, I have now watched that Sarikas video. As you say, it is excellent.

 

[thomas.dahl]

So Serif want us to keep the history panel open and on top of any other panels.  This is really annoying.  Page Plus was much easier to work with from this perspective.  Ctr-Z is useful, but it means letting go of the mouse.  Just because Photoshop denies us this function does not mean that Serif has to follow suit.

I keep wondering what it is about the software that prevents this feature to be available.  The history panel is able to store all actions so it should be possible to make this work with two icons. 

Is there some logic behind this that I have missed?  Or is it some GUI designer's personal peeve that we do not deserve the function?

Surely this could be a "customisation" option for the tool bar so that the designer will not be offended by seeing them.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, thomas.dahl said:

So Serif want us to keep the history panel open and on top of any other panels.

In all of the Affinity apps a keyboard shortcut can be assigned to show/hide the History panel, & of course it can be part of a tabbed Studio group, so it does not need to be or on top of anything else unless that is what you want.

1 hour ago, thomas.dahl said:

Ctr-Z is useful, but it means letting go of the mouse.

Why? I only need one hand to use the mouse, so the other one is always free for things like activating keyboard shortcuts. In particular, even if an app has the old school Undo/Redo buttons in its toolbar (which for Mac apps is becoming increasingly less common),I never use them because it means moving the mouse pointer out of the work area, so it is a slower workflow compared to using the keyboard shortcuts for that.

Worse, for apps that do not have a History panel or the equivalent, it becomes very time consuming to undo more than a few steps & makes it quite tedious to go back & forth between more than a few steps to compare the results, something that can be done very quickly using the History panel slider.

[Pšenda]

13 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I never use them because it means moving the mouse pointer out of the work area, so it is a slower workflow compared to using the keyboard shortcuts for that.

For users with disabilities and for users working with tablets, for whom the use of keyboard shortcuts is a great complication, your opinion and experience is certainly very beneficial.

[R C-R]

15 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

For users with disabilities and for users working with tablets, for whom the use of keyboard shortcuts is a great complication, your opinion and experience is certainly very beneficial.

I was just pointing out why I personally do not use Undo/Redo buttons, which may or may not have something to do with their increasing rarity in Mac apps.

[v_kyr]

Shouldn't be a big deal to add two additional undo/redo icon buttons to the UI toolbar & tools customizations.

[Old Bruce]

2 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Shouldn't be a big deal to add two additional undo/redo icon buttons to the UI toolbar & tools customizations.

And Print, Save, Save As..., Open...,  New..., Copy, Paste and those are just the ones off the top of my head that have been requested. I have no problem with adding these to toolbar buttons but please don't make them defaults.

[v_kyr]

1 minute ago, Old Bruce said:

And Print, Save, Save As..., Open...,  New..., Copy, Paste and those are just the ones off the top of my head that have been requested. I have no problem with adding these to toolbar buttons but please don't make them defaults.

Jip, just adding the most common needed/demanded ones (like Undo/Redo) from people to the customization sections, so everybody can decide and customize on it's own if they want to place those then onto the UI toolbar & tools sections for reuse.

[R C-R]

27 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Jip, just adding the most common needed/demanded ones (like Undo/Redo) from people to the customization sections, so everybody can decide and customize on it's own if they want to place those then onto the UI toolbar & tools sections for reuse.

But which are actually the most often needed/requested ones? There seems to be no end to the items people want to be able to add to the toolbar. Some want items that currently appear in the contextual toolbar, or even buttons for tools from the Tools panel. When you consider that toolbar buttons can be for anything from performing an immediate action like undo or redo to opening a dialog window for file operations, & there is already one that is not a button but an info display (Status), the possibilities seem limitless.

So basically, I think that no matter which ones get added, there will still be complaints about the ones not added, as well as complaints about the lack of a multi-row toolbar to make everything available on it.

[iconoclast]

When I'm bored and lazy, I sometimes  like to put my feet up and fiddle around with only one hand on the mouse and the other with a cup of coffee. In such cases, undo and redo buttons are very useful. But that is of course not professional behavior. Professional Graphic Designers will usually not miss those buttons, I think. But they wouldn't disturb me if they would be there, I think. The best solution would be if one would have the choice to add them to the bar below the menus or not, like e.g. in Krita.

[v_kyr]

2 hours ago, R C-R said:

But which are actually the most often needed/requested ones?

Make a poll and you will know.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, iconoclast said:

When I'm bored and lazy, I sometimes  like to put my feet up and fiddle around with only one hand on the mouse and the other with a cup of coffee. In such cases, undo and redo buttons are very useful.

For such casual uses it should not matter much if you have to use a menu or the History panel instead of a button, should it? Besides, if you really are being lazy then why would you want to use one-step-at-a-time buttons when you can use a slider to effortlessly scrub back & forth through lots of steps?

 

42 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Make a poll and you will know.

Do you mean the kind of multiple-choice poll this forum supports? If so, how many choices would it have to avoid selection bias? IOW, if there are just 4 or 8 possibilities to choose from, how would we know if any of them are really the most needed/requested ones, & how many people are actually voting for any of them only because they are the only ones listed?

[v_kyr]

38 minutes ago, R C-R said:

...how many people are actually voting for any of them only because they are the only ones listed?

I have no idea, but isn't that the point of this forum feature, why else would you have it here if not for such purposes? - Otherwise you just have to search & count all forum postings related for this request (...and who's going to do that instead then).

You probably can endless debate about that undo/redo button theme, aka pro/cons, for or against these. 

Do I personally need that (?), no not really, since I'm a CODER haha. But however if others have a real need for it, it doesn't bother me either if there are additional clickable undo/redo buttons or not, since I don't have and are not forced to use these for my workflows. - Is there some specific situation where I possibly would use them (?), maybe when doing some howto video in order to better visually indicate there then the performing of a undo/redo step or the like.