Saving lost anchors placed by paths tool?

[Nimarus]

Okay, so this has happened to me a few times. Recently, I used the paths tool to target a woman's hair in an image to swap colors and change the hair color. I spent maybe 10-15 minutes meticulously placing anchors to place a selection by paths so I'd only make changes to the hair. I feel comfortable with all the work I put in and then mistakingly select "Rotate Colors" before selecting "to paths." I realize my error when all the colors in the image are changing instead of what I...failed to click select>from path. I back out and all of my 100+ anchors are now gone and all that work lost.

My question is, is there an option to undo this somewhere? To undo my blunder and save the 100+ carefully placed anchors that I just lost?

[PixLab]

(08-22-2023, 11:36 PM)Nimarus Wrote: I back out and all of my 100+ anchors are now gone and all that work lost.

Use Ctrl+Y

Ctrl+Z => undo
Ctrl+Y => redo

When you say "I back out" what did you do exactly?

Or go to the Path dialog, and make visible by clicking on the eye the one you were working on,
Or keep the rotated colors "stage" (go back to it using Ctrl+Y as necessary) and just drag and drop the same image from your folder on the canvas again if you're unsure about what you're doing (then you can delete the rotated layer)

[Ofnuts]

(08-22-2023, 11:36 PM)Nimarus Wrote: Okay, so this has happened to me a few times. Recently, I used the paths tool to target a woman's hair in an image to swap colors and change the hair color. I spent maybe 10-15 minutes meticulously placing anchors to place a selection by paths so I'd only make changes to the hair. I feel comfortable with all the work I put in and then mistakingly select "Rotate Colors" before selecting "to paths." I realize my error when all the colors in the image are changing instead of what I...failed to click select>from path. I back out and all of my 100+ anchors are now gone and all that work lost.

My question is, is there an option to undo this somewhere? To undo my blunder and save the 100+ carefully placed anchors that I just lost?

I'm a bit surprised.... When you edit a path, there is an undo step for each operation you do on the path. If you use Edit > Undo history you should see this:

   

So if you undo the Rotate Colors you still have a path and even if you undo too much, you will undo your last anchors but not all the path.

So "backing out" may not have been just hitting Ctrl-Z...

Also, what is you Path list like? Maybe you added an empty path so the active path is empty and your beloved path is still there, just waiting to be selected again.