Section 91. Working with Version Cue Versions

#91. Working with Version Cue Versions

Version Cue versions are historical snapshots of your files that you decide to capture and save when you've made enough edits or changes to your file to warrant a new version. Once you've set up Version Cue (see #15), created your projects, and started saving versions within it (see #16), you may want to dig a little deeper and learn how to work with Version Cue versions.

Using the Adobe Dialog

Always use the Adobe dialog states (or Bridge) when opening, saving, placing, importing, and exporting files. The Adobe dialog offers a much richer experience than your OS dialogs for working with Version Cue projects, providing you with direct navigation to your Version Cue projects and important information regarding the files such as status, version comments, and if alternates are available.

When you open a Version Cue project file, a working copy is created on your local hard drive. The file is then marked as "In Use" to prevent other users from opening the file and accidentally overwriting any of your changes. That isn't to say that your other team members are totally locked out of using the file. Depending on how the Version Cue project is set up (see #94), they may be able to open the file but will be required to save their changes as a separate version. An alert appears (Figure 91a) when you attempt to open a file that is in use by someone else on your team. You have the option of closing the document and waiting for that person to finish making changes or continuing to work with the file at the risk of having to manually reconcile any differences between each other's work.

Figure 91a. When opening a file that's already open by someone else in the Version Cue Workspace, an alert appears giving you the option of continuing to work on the file or not.

Once you're through editing the file, you can save a new version by choosing File > Save a Version. This saves the file to the Version Cue Workspace and marks the status of the files "Synchronized," meaning your working copy and the file in the Version Cue project are identical.

You can view and manage the version of a file from the Versions dialog, which you can access by selecting Versions from a myriad of menus available throughout CS2: the Project Tools menu in the Adobe dialog state of a CS2 application's file dialogs; the document status menu in Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign when the file is open; and the contextual menu when selecting the original file in any view of Bridge. Switch to the Versions and Alternates view in Bridge to view all the versions of the files in a folder at once (Figure 91b). You can also perform version status updates directly from Bridge. When a file is selected in Bridge, commands to synchronize, mark a file as in use, or revert a file to its last version are available by choosing Tools > Version Cue.

Figure 91b. The Versions and Alternates view in Bridge makes it easy to visualize and manage the versions in your project.