Chapter 15: Manipulating Your Images
Digital wedding photography has evolved into two basic methods of working with images: destructive imaging and non-destructive imaging. Destructive imaging techniques don't destroy the image, as in make it ugly, but they do change the original pixel data. The changes become permanent when you save the file, and thus, you have technically “destroyed” the original image. Of course, you could always save the changes you make to a new image file, but storing double the amount of data is not a pleasant thought — especially considering how much digital information you already produce with each wedding.
Non-destructive imaging techniques don't change the pixels in your image at all. Instead, non-destructive imaging processes use the original file as a reference and keep a text record that describes every change you've made to the image. The software program you use for non-destructive imaging uses a Library or Catalog to store the text description of the changes. The software also generates a preview image so you can see the changes on your computer screen, and this preview is also stored in the Library.
Today the majority of wedding photographers use non-destructive imaging in their daily workflow. Programs like Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Apple's Aperture are used perhaps 98 percent of the time to work through the thousands of images that will ...
