History and Undo

Undo and redo

While you edit an image, every box change is a step: Ctrl+Z undoes it, Ctrl+Shift+Z or Ctrl+Y redoes it, as do the buttons ↶ and ↷ in the toolbar. Holding an arrow key is one step.

History

The History panel (on the right, at the bottom, click to open) lists every saved state of the open image, also from earlier days, with the time, the user and what happened: saved, decided in review, annotators agreed, restored, or changed outside the web app.

History panel open: an older version of part_003.png is shown in pink over the image, with numbered markers where it differs from the boxes in the editor

  • Click a version to see it in pink over the image. Numbered markers show where it differs from the boxes in the editor.

  • Older and Newer (or the keys , and .) step through the versions; Close hides it again.

  • Restore puts the version into the editor as unsaved changes. Saving adds a new version; the history is never rewritten.

History panel: the selected version from anna, compared with the editor 3 only in the version and 6 different, buttons Older, Newer, Close and Restore; below the list of versions

Changes made with the desktop tool on the same folder are kept as versions too, with the user from <image>.json. The history keeps the exact text of each CSV file, so restoring writes an earlier state back byte for byte.

With several annotators per image, annotators see the history of their own version only. Reviewers choose under Show whether they see the reference or one annotator’s history.