PSC08: Version Cue

Version Cue is one of tose things that works behind the scenes of Photoshop and other Adobe applications, and it can make certain things very easy for you.

Version Cue is available in Photoshop CS and CS2, the things that I will mention today are based on CS2 and in some cases on the PC platform. Things on the Mac should work very much the same way, I just can't compare things myself here as I don't have a Mac.

Versioning

First and most important, Version Cue allows you to keep multiple versions of the same document, which will make it very easy for you to go back to one of the previous versions if you need to do so.

But before we get into the details, let's get it fired up first. When I installed Adobe CS2, I made sure to also install Adobe Version Cue and Adobe Bridge. Bridge and Version Cue go hand in hand and it makes a lot of sense to use them together. After the installation, my PC's task bar showes a green leaf icon, and a right click on that icon reveals a menu that will allow you to explore some further options.

The most important thing here is the entry "Turn Version Cue CS2 On" or "Off" - let's switch it on. It'll take a few seconds and then you're ready to go.

Creating a Project

In order to get an image or a document into Version Cue, you'll first have to create a project. Here's an easy way to do this. In Photoshop, choose "Save As..." for your image, then - if you haven't done so yet - select "Use Adobe Dialog" in the bottom left corner of the "Save As.." dialog. After you've done so, check the right top of the dialog. There's a little briefcase icon now that will allow you to create a new Version Cue project. Once you've done so, and saved the image to that project, you're all set to use versioning on your files.

Saving a Version

From now on whenever you make a change to a picture within Photoshop, or another Adobe document within some of the other Adobe applications, you'll find a menu entry next to the usual "Save As.." titled "Save A Version..".

Managing Versions

Let's give that a try by doing some changes to an image and saving multiple versions of it. Now let's open up Adobe Bridge by clicking on the Bridge icon in the top right corner of Photoshop. Navigate to the file you changed by selecting Version Cue in the left pane of Bridge and then selecting the project you just created on the right hand side. You'll see a thumbnail of your image in Bridge, but in order to see the different versions, you'll have to do one more step. Click the icon on the bottom right of Bridge in order to enable the versions view. And now you'll see that your image has more than one version, Bridge will actually show you thumbnails and detail information about all the versions that you have saved. If you right click on an older version, you can delete it, view it or even promote it to the current version.

Magic Updates

Even though the versioning capability in itself is pretty cool, things get really exciting once you start using multiple Adobe applications together on a project and share documents though Version Cue. The Photoshop Corner web site for example is created using Photoshop, Adobe GoLive, Bridge and Version Cue and here's where it gets really magic. I create the screenshots for the Photoshop Corner web site in Photoshop and save them in Version Cue. Now using Bridge, I drag them into the according web page in GoLive as so called Smart Objects. Now whenever I update any of the images in Photoshop, they will automatically get updated on the according web page in GoLive. Look at the screenshot of this Photoshop Corner's chapter "Creating a Project" for example. After I had the first version of that screenshot on this page, I thought that it might be nice to add a red circle in order to illustrate things a little better. So I double-clicked the image in GoLive, which brought up Photoshop, I added the red marker, I saved a new version and as soon as I was back to GoLive, the image on the web page was already updated.

Sharing Work

Another great thing about Version Cue is that it allows you to share projects over the network. This way, you could have a web designer create the web site, a graphic artist working on the images for that site, and someone else working on some vector images. And in the end, everything gets pulled together through Version Cue - and if you find that the new version of that banner on one of the pages doesn't look as good as an older one, you could simply go back a version.

Backups and More

But the real power of Version Cue gets obvious once you open up its Advanced Administration. From here you can manage users in order to allow access for specific projects to specific users. You can manage projects, import data from previous Version Cue versions, clean up old versions of your documents, and even set up automatic backups for your projects. This way you can keep your data safe and concentrate on your work.

Conclusion

After having worked with Version Cue, Photoshop, GoLive and Bridge for a while, I find it hard to imagine how I could have ever have accomplished things without them. But even if you only use Photoshop, Version Cue is certainly worth a closer look.