Edit History & Undo
Every edit you make to a result is recorded as a step. The HISTORY section in the Editor’s right sidebar shows those steps as a timeline you can click through, and ⌘Z / Ctrl+Z walks the same list one step at a time.
This is separate from the strip of stacked results along the bottom of the Editor — that’s a list of different images from this session. See Compare & Session History for that one.
The HISTORY timeline
Section titled “The HISTORY timeline”HISTORY sits under Adjustments in the sidebar. It’s part of Advanced mode, and it hides itself entirely when a result has no edits yet — so an untouched stack costs no sidebar space.
Steps are listed newest at the top, with a Stacked (original) row at the bottom representing the result as it came out of stacking.
- Click any row to return the image to that point.
- Rows above the one you’re on — the redo tail — dim, but stay clickable. Click one to go forward again.
- Make a new edit while stepped back and the redo tail is discarded, exactly as you’d expect from Lightroom or Photoshop.
Undo and redo
Section titled “Undo and redo”| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
⌘Z / Ctrl+Z | Undo one step |
⌘⇧Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z | Redo one step |
⌘⌥Z / Ctrl+Alt+Z | Toggle the last edit on and off |
Undo is per image. It applies to the result you’re currently looking at, and never jumps you to a different image in the session strip. If you want to undo something on another result, switch to it first.
⌘⌥Z is an A/B toggle rather than a step: it flips the edit at your current position off and back on, which is the quickest way to judge whether a change actually helped.
What counts as a step
Section titled “What counts as a step”Two kinds of edit are recorded:
- Adjustment changes — slider moves, per mask. A continuous drag collapses into one step rather than hundreds.
- Pixel edits — each Retouch stroke, Spot Correct, and Defringe gesture, recorded individually.
Pixel edits become timeline steps when you Apply, which means you can undo them after leaving the editor. You no longer have to get a retouch right before applying it, and applying no longer locks the work in.
Some things are deliberately not steps: crop, switching between masks, and changing the Look. Crop and Look are single settings you can simply set again; mask switching isn’t an edit at all.
Reopened DNGs
Section titled “Reopened DNGs”When you save a DNG, your edit history is written into the file. Reopen it and the timeline comes back — including work from a previous session.
Pixel-edit rows on a reopened file show dimmed. Their results are already baked into the saved pixels, so Macro Studio can’t reverse them until it knows how they were made. Click one and it runs a one-time “Rebuilding edit history” pass: the image is reconstructed from its source frames and every recorded edit is re-applied in order. After that the whole timeline steps instantly, in both directions.
Two conditions for this to work:
- The source frames must still be on disk. If they’ve moved, open Retouch and use the relocate prompt to point Macro Studio at their new location.
- The file must be a DNG. TIFF and JPEG carry no edit state — they’re baked pixels only.
One file can’t rebuild even when both hold: a Raw DNG. Its timeline comes back and its pixel-edit rows are there, but they stay dimmed for good. Rebuilding means re-blending from the source frames, and that would develop the picture Macro Studio’s way rather than your raw editor’s. Save a Developed DNG alongside it if you want to step back through pixel edits later.
The same machinery drives Look changes, which is why your edits and your redo steps survive switching Look.
Limits worth knowing
Section titled “Limits worth knowing”- A result’s history holds up to 1,000 steps. Adjustment steps are tiny, so this is a tidiness bound rather than a memory one.
- Pixel edits hold real image data, so they live under a memory budget. When you push past it, the oldest pixel steps release their stored regions and become dimmed rows — the same state as a reopened file. They stay in the timeline, navigation passes over them with their pixels intact, and clicking one triggers the rebuild that makes it fully reversible again.
- Saving into a DNG keeps up to 500 steps, chosen around your current position so that a file saved mid-undo reopens with its redo tail intact.
See also
Section titled “See also”- Compare & Session History — the strip of stacked results, which is a different thing.
- Retouch, Spot Correct, Defringe — the pixel edits that become steps.
- The Look — how edits are replayed when the Look changes.
- Saving — which formats carry edit history.