Comp How-To: History Scrubber
Swipe left! This cool Comp feature allows you to scroll through your work and save out early versions to your Creative Cloud account.
The creative process is iterative. During those heady ideation phases — full of fast and furious exploration — “a-ha!” moments often get lost in the shuffle.
Imagine this: You’re on the subway and have a major thought about a major design project that’s been a particularly tough nut to crack. You grab your tablet; you open Comp; and you start brainstorming. Like, you’re really getting into it: adding text and importing images; rotating, clipping and cropping, selecting everything and moving it around together. Once you get to the office, you look at your layout and think: “Wow. I would love to have a look back at how I got here.”
Rather than wading all the way back through your work for those potential breakthroughs one undo at a time, or proactively saving out versions of your files as you go — familiar strategies for desktop users, but both can get a bit tedious and unwieldy — we wanted to give you a super simple strategy to get a quick, completely comprehensive overview of your progress, and the added ability to save out ANY version, at any time.
History Scrubber is our solution. This Comp-specific function allows you to scroll back (and forth again) through your work, and save out unlimited different versions to your Creative Cloud account with a few simple swipes and taps.
Here’s how it works:
Start a new project in Comp, or open an existing one. Start noodling — say, drop in a text box or two, add an image of a banana stamp and rotate it around. At any point in your process:
- Place three fingers on the right side of your screen.
- Slowly begin to swipe left. A timeline will appear at the top, showing your complete progression in purple.
3. Take your fingers off the screen when you see a layout you’d like to save.
4. Tap the Action icon in the upper right of the top nav bar (see below). Select where you’d like to send, publish, or share your file, and a copy of that specific version will be saved to your Creative Cloud, complete with live objects and text.
Now check it out in action! Adobe Creative Resident Christine Herrin used Comp to create a layout featuring some of her favorite spots in San Francisco, then recorded her process with history scrubber for her Insta fans. (Here’s more on her process):
We’ve got more How-Tos coming up, along with awesome Comp-assisted projects from creative folks like Christine. Stay tuned!
Comp is free (!) for Creative Cloud subscribers* — download it now for your iPhone or iPad. Not yet a Creative Cloud member? Sign up for a FREE Adobe ID today and try out the latest CC apps too.
*Android users, we’ve just released a beta version of the app! Click here to become part of the pre-release program.
Check out our growing visual gallery for how-tos and at-a-glance guidance on navigating Comp.
Want to be the first to try out the latest Comp releases? Join our beta program for early access to new features, and collaborate with the Comp team in real-time on Slack to design and develop future updates. If you’re interested, fill out this short survey, and we’ll be in touch soon.
