HistoryPalette: Supporting Exploration and Reuse of Past Alternatives in Image Generation and Editing

Creative tasks require creators to iteratively produce, select, and discard potentially useful ideas. Now, creativity tools include generative AI features (e.g., Photoshop Generative Fill) that increase the number of alternatives creators consider through rapid experiments with prompts and random generations. Creators use tedious manual systems for organizing their prior ideas by saving file versions or hiding layers, but they lack the support they want for reusing prior alternatives in personal work or in communication with others. We present HistoryPalette, a system that supports exploration and reuse of prior designs in generative image creation and editing. Using HistoryPalette, creators and their collaborators explore a “palette” of prior design alternatives organized by spatial position, topic category, and creation time. HistoryPalette enables creators to quickly preview and reuse their prior work. In creative professional and client collaborator user studies, participants generated and edited images by exploring and reusing past design alternatives with HistoryPalette.