---
title: 'How to Use the Undo Brush Tool in Affinity Photo'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=ffJJurWUmeM'
video_id: 'ffJJurWUmeM'
date: 2026-08-11
duration_sec: 535
---

# How to Use the Undo Brush Tool in Affinity Photo

> Source: [How to Use the Undo Brush Tool in Affinity Photo](https://youtube.com/watch?v=ffJJurWUmeM)

## Summary

This video demonstrates the Undo Brush tool in Affinity Photo, a feature that allows users to reapply specific points from their history or from saved snapshots onto their canvas. The tutorial covers both basic history-based redrawing and advanced snapshot-based painting, enabling creative effects like selectively applying filters to different parts of an image.

### Key Points

- **Introduction to Undo Brush Tool** [00:00] — The Undo Brush tool in Affinity Photo is underutilized but powerful for creating effects. It can be used to undo/recreate from history or use snapshots for complex compositions.
- **Basic History Redrawing** [01:04] — Apply effects like black and white, ripple, and pixelate. Then use the Undo Brush (under Clone Stamp) to draw a specific history state back onto the image, selectively reapplying effects.
- **Introduction to Snapshots** [02:56] — Snapshots are accessed via Window > General > Snapshots. They save the entire state of the project (layers and info) at a point in time, allowing easy switching between versions.
- **Creating and Restoring Snapshots** [03:35] — Create snapshots for different versions (e.g., 'default', 'pixelate', 'ripple'). Use 'Restore Snapshot' to jump between these versions instantly.
- **Drawing from Snapshots** [04:20] — Select a snapshot, choose the Undo Brush, and paint parts of that snapshot onto the current image. This allows combining effects from multiple versions into one composition.
- **Troubleshooting and Tips** [06:22] — If drawing doesn't work, ensure a layer is selected or add a new pixel layer. Adjust brush size for finer details. You can also create new snapshots of combined effects.
- **Creative Applications** [07:53] — The technique effectively creates 'brushes' of different image versions. Example: creating a sunglass effect by drawing effects only into the glasses area.

### Conclusion

The Undo Brush tool, combined with snapshots, offers a flexible way to selectively apply effects from different versions of an image, enabling creative and precise edits in Affinity Photo.

## Transcript

So inside of Finite TV, you have a tool that I don't think a lot of people know about, which is something called a undo brush tool. And it doesn't sound very exciting when you say it out like that, but it is actually a super cool tool when it comes to creating many different awesome effects.
So I wanted to show this off in a separate video to just kind of demonstrate how to use it, because it is slightly complicated, but once you know how to use it, it's going to be super awesome. Now the tool I'm talking about is called undo brush tool and it might not be that exciting of a name
but it does actually do some very cool things inside your images and essentially you can use it in two different ways one is to just simply undo or recreate from a different step inside your history and another thing is you can use something called snapshots which is incredibly
awesome inside your compositions. So let me go ahead and demonstrate how you can use this in the simple version, which is just kind of to go back in your history and redo a couple of steps inside your program. So let's say I have this photo here, and I might want to go ahead and do
some changes. Let's say I go down and let's say I make it black and white, like I do right here. And let's say I also go down inside maybe my filters and add a ripple effect inside the photo.
and I might want to, let's say, pixelate it. So I can also go in and say I want to pixelate, turn it up a little bit, so we get some pixels in here. And also we get different effects going on
inside the composition. Now, what I can do is I can actually go ahead and delete these again. And what I can then do is select my Undo Brush tool, which is found inside underneath my Clone Stamp tool,
and I can go inside my History down here. So you can see we do actually have a History panel. and I can choose a particular point in my history and redraw that point onto my canvas.
So what I can say is maybe when I added the ripple layer, I'm going to take that one, and then you can see I can actually draw that state inside my history onto my image,
or maybe I want to go back to where I just added black and white So to do that you can see I still drawing black and white but I not drawing the ripples because at that point in history I did not add the ripple effect yet So you can just kind of go in and reapply a certain point inside your history here
I can also go back to maybe my original drawing and just draw in the original, and maybe I can go back again and draw the pixelated effect. So I can start drawing in some pixels here. So you can just kind of see how we can go in and reapply from a certain point in history.
But now there is also another way to use this tool, which is incredibly cool when it comes to Affinity. So let's go ahead and go back in history and just kind of redo everything. And what I would like to do now is apply some effects inside this particular photo here.
So I could say that right now there's no effects added inside my composition. Like this is just a default photo. So I'm going to go up to Window, going to go down to General, and then we have something called Snapshots.
Now, Snapshots is this awesome-looking window. Well, awesome, it's kind of plain. But it has some really cool features, which is that you can go in and add a snapshot of this certain point inside your project.
So what I can do is I can call this one default, because this is just the default image. So if I save this one, you can see that now we have a snapshot with all the layers and all the information saved inside this moment in time.
So now if I want to add something inside my photo, maybe I want to go in and say I want to add a filter. This could be, for example, the pixelate again. So I'm just going to pixelate, add a few pixels inside the photo like this, maybe a little bit more like so.
And then I can add another snapshot. So I'll say I want to add a snapshot. I can call this one pixelate because that's what I did. So pixelate. Now I might want to go back to the original version and do something different. So I can click on my original up here, which is called default,
click on restore snapshot, and then you can see we have the original again. And if I want to go back again inside my Pixelated version, I just click it down here and click restore snapshot. And we just kind of go between different versions of this image here.
Now the really cool thing happens when we can start drawing in from various snapshots into one image And in order to demonstrate that let actually go and create another snapshot So I just going to go back to my default one
And say I might want to go down to filter. And let's say we want to add a ripple effect. So we're just going to do that. I might also want to go in and add a adjustment layer.
This could be the normals. I could just go in and add some really cool color schemes here. So in this sort of way, we can just kind of, you know, change how we want the image to look like, like something like this, right?
Then I add another snapshot by clicking Add Snapshot, and I call this one Ripple, like so. And now what we can do is we can go back inside my default version and say, well, this is the original,
and I might want to paint in from one of these other snapshots. So what I can do is I want to make sure that I have one of these snapshots selected. so I can select it by going down to, let's go ahead and say pixelate here.
You want to click on the small icon next to pixelate, and then I can go ahead and make sure that my undo brush tool is selected, which is right here. Now, at the moment, you can see when I start drawing, nothing happens,
and that's because I need to make sure, first of all, that I have a layer selected that I want to draw on. So if I pick the layer up here, you can see that now I started drawing in a pixelated part of that image.
I'm just going to draw it inside the water down there. I might want to add the ripple effect inside the sky or something, so I can also pick that one. And I can go in and say, well, the sky has to be this awesome ripple effect that I added in, like so.
You can always change the size of the brush, you know, just to get the finer details. And again, if you accidentally did this, oh no, then you can go back to the default one and just kind of draw that one in again.
Default one. Pixelate. Draw that one in here. Like so. So you can draw in from different snapshots, which is super cool. If you do get this I guess bug where you can really draw even though you did select the layer add in a new pixel layer and start drawing from that one because you can also do that and go in and maybe add the ripple effect down here so you can see even though I don have that particular layer selected you can also do it from a different pixel layer
So if you do not have the option to draw on the original image because you accidentally did something, just go ahead and add a new pixel layer which is going to allow for you to do this. So you can see you can just kind of draw it in here and add some different really cool
effects inside this photo here. Then you can add another snapshot of this version here and just say new 01. Go back inside the default version here. I'm just going to store it. Add another effect in here. Let's say I want to add some, change
the colors. You can do that. I'm going to just change the color scheme and then I go back inside the new version and make sure I have the brush tool selected and Then I go back down and I draw in, you know, just parts of this, whatever I want to change.
So I can just kind of do this. Oh, so you get like a sunset going on in the background. So in this sort of way, you can go in and just apply these changes from different versions of your image using snapshots. So in this kind of way, we're creating brushes, essentially, of different versions of the same photo
that you might have added as a snapshot inside the snapshots panel. and it's just a really cool way to create many different cool effects inside your different projects. I saw one guy, he had a tutorial on YouTube.
That's the one I used at least back when I was using the Finji version 2 and he would create this sunglass effect where the person has sunglasses on and he would create different effects on the composition and then just draw it into the sunglasses and it just looked really cool.
So you might find some really creative ways to use this tool for many different things and again, this is just me showing off how to draw but there's many different ways you can just sort of use this snapshot version to like create some really cool stuff inside your your photos so with that
said I hope you got something out of this video and I'll see you guys next time