Digital Wedding Photography Secrets

Chapter 8. Photoshop Must-Know Info

If you are new to the wonderful world of Photoshop, this chapter is just what the doctor ordered. It offers all the basic stuff you need to know about Photoshop.

Sure, Photoshop can be intimidating. That's why this chapter is included in this book. It gives you a strong foundation for working on your images, which is covered in the next chapter.

Never Work on the Original Image

This is the mother of photography basics: Never work on your original image files. It's just too risky.

Not convinced? Consider a scenario in which you finish making all of your adjustments and enhancements and then you accidentally press Save rather than Save As. Uh oh! Your original may be lost forever—unless you shoot RAW files, which always remain as RAW files.

Lose that magical "first kiss" or a "secret kiss" photo, and the bride and groom will be more than a bit upset with you!

So it's absolutely critical to always—always—back up your image files. Save them in at least two places, because chances are ... your hard drive will eventually crash, sending your one-of-a-kind pictures into "never never land" forever.

My advice is to back up these precious files using an accessory hard drive, which can accommodate more files than a DVD. Also, the write speed to a hard drive is much ...