Version history and publishing

Pixel Art Studio records two kinds of history. Auto-saves happen in the background as you work, and they recover work after errors. Published versions are deliberate milestones you create, and they are the states the team can rely on.

Open Version History

Click Version History in the top toolbar. The panel shows two sections: Auto-saves and Published.

Auto-saves

Auto-saves happen automatically as you work. They let you recover after taking an edit in the wrong direction.

Browse the Auto-saves list, where each entry shows when it was made. Click an entry to preview it, then Restore to roll the project back to that state. Rolling back is itself reversible, because the state you just left gets auto-saved shortly after.

Published versions

Published versions are deliberate checkpoints you create with a comment. They persist independently of auto-saves, making them the durable record. To publish, click Publish in the top toolbar, enter a Version comment, and click Publish. The version appears under Version History, Published.

Use comments that describe what’s true at that point, not version numbers. silhouette_approved, palette_locked, walk_cycle_timing_ready, export_ready, final_v1 all tell a reviewer exactly what state the project was in. v2 tells them nothing.

To restore a published version, open Version History, pick the version under Published, and Restore. You’ll be asked to confirm, because restoring replaces the current project state. After restoring, the project sits at that milestone and you continue from there.

Save vs publish

Press Ctrl+S constantly, which keeps the current state. Auto-saves happen on their own, so ignore them unless you need to roll back. Publish only at meaningful checkpoints. A sensible cadence for a typical asset:

1. silhouette: outline reads at 1× across all frames.
2. palette_locked: colors finalised, palette locked.
3. rough_anim: animation blocking done.
4. timing_locked: frame durations set.
5. export_ready: exports generated and checked.
6. final: signed off.

Each publish is a restore point, so a regression after export_ready is one click away from being undone. Publish before risky changes such as a layer-stack refactor.

If you restore the wrong version, open Version History again and find the state you actually wanted; the state before your restore is in the auto-save list.