How to Restore Edited Photos

The ability to edit images quickly and easily is one of the perks of digital photography, but sometimes you make an edit you’d like to undo. It’s not hard to restore an edited photo; it just takes a few clicks of the mouse to get the image back to its original state.

Open your image in your photo editing software program. Go to “File,” then “Open” and select the image you want to open.

Save the image as a document in your photo editing program. For instance, if you have Photoshop, you'll save the image as a Photoshop document. This allows you to save an original high-quality copy of your photograph before you begin making edits. To do this go to the "File" menu and click "Save As." Select your photo editing software program (Photoshop, for instance), and choose the location where you'll be saving the image (such as an "images folder") and give it a name. Then click "OK."

Select “Undo” from the Edit menu. As long as you’ve saved your original image, you can undo any edits.

Select the “Redo” command from the Edit menu. Redo lets you restore the image to the state it was in before you selected “Undo.”

Use the “Undo History” screen, if available on your photo editing software. The “Undo History” tool allows you to undo many edits quite easily.

Select the “Revert to Saved” command if it’s available on your photo editing software. This will allow you to restore the image to the way it was the last it was saved. If you don’t have a “Revert to Saved” command in your software, just close your photo without saving it and reopen the image. The image will look the way it did the last time you saved it.