Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2

The Snapshots panel, located between the Presets and History panels, inside the Develop module is a handy means for recording the settings of the photo you are working on at significant points in your workflow.

By default a new snapshot called Import is automatically created during Import and appears in the Snapshots panel. You can add new snapshots by clicking the plus sign, and delete any snapshot by clicking the minus sign at the top of the panel. You can preview snapshots in the Navigator panel by moving the cursor over the snapshot. This works just the same as previewing Presets and History states.

Snapshots are very similar to history states in that they allow you to freeze settings at a certain point in your workflow and return to them or use them to compare against your progress.

Snapshots are arranged in alpha-numerical order automatically as you create them. Let’s walk through an example to see how they can be useful.

One of the first things you are likely to do with a new raw photo is apply a camera profile and set white balance. How you proceed from that point may vary, so this can be a handy point to create a snapshot for comparison sake as you move forward.

Step 1.

Click the + sign at the top of the Snapshots panel. This will result in the New Snapshot dialog displaying.

Step 2.

Give the snapshot a descriptive name and click Create.

Since snapshots are arranged alpha-numerically I’ve gotten into the habit of numbering my snapshots as I create them so that the order of steps is more clear. Chances are you won’t remember the order if you revisit an image days, weeks or months down the road.

Another way to create a snapshot is to use a history state. Just right-click the desired history state and choose Create Snapshot from the contextual menu.

Notice that the history state label is used as the default name of the snapshot. You can leave it this way or customize as needed.

After you have been working for awhile it is helpful to use the Before and After view to see how far you have come. Snapshots can come in handy here too. The default Before view is the import state. That may be helpful in some cases, but I usually like to compare against the look of the image after the camera profile and white balance has been applied since that is my preferred starting point.

Step 1.

Go to View > Before/After and choose a preferred view option.

Step 2.

Right-click on the snapshot you want to use as the Before state.

Step 3.

Choose Copy Snapshot Settings to Before to update the Before view with these settings.

Now you have a much more useful comparison to assess how the photo is progressing. If you decide that you don’t like where this is headed you can click on a previous snapshot and jump back to that state and continue from there.

Now you may be thinking that you can already do that with the states in the History panel, and this is true, but it doesn’t take long to produce a lot of history states. Isn’t much easier to jump back to a snapshot that you named (and numbered)?

You can right-click and rename any snapshot (except the default import) at any time, and update a past snapshot with new settings via the same contextual menu. Oh, and snapshots can be written to a file’s XMP metadata (unlike history states), which means it is possible to store your snapshots with the file itself and they will even be visible inside of Camera Raw.

While snapshots may not be useful for every photo nor every work session they can be a powerful tool when you need them, so give it a try!