How to work non-destructive in photoshop

[Kvikken]

I made a little tutorial about how to work non-destructive a little while ago, and thought I could share it with you here at DPS as well
I made the tutorial as a PDF-file that has to be downloaded and can be found here (to the left of the picture it says download).

Some great things when it comes to working non-destructive:

1. You can undo or change any effect you have given a picture at any stage in the process without affecting other changes, even weeks or months later.
   
2. You do not need to worry about how far back your history palette goes.
   
3. Your original file will always stay the same.
   
4. It’s easier to apply changes on only parts of the picture, and you can at any given time undo or change the parts you want affected.
   
5. If you wonder how you managed to get an effect on an earlier work you
   can always go back and see exactly what you did.

Some of the features mentioned in the tutorial is only available in Photoshop CS3, but that's just a few of them. The most important things are available in earlier versions of photoshop (and I guess that at least layers and layer mask are available in other editing program) as well.

If you have any questions it's just to ask.

[marcal]

Thanks for sharing that. I like this PDF you've done. However, I can't print it because the size is too big... could you change that? I've tried but I can't...

I also like to work non-destructive as much as possible!

[Kvikken]

Didn't really think about printing when I made the tutorial, which is something I definitely should have thought about

I'll see if I can do something about it

[wattsbw2004]

I recently just got into non-destructive editing in cs4 with alot of my HDR work. One thing to mention is the file size increases and slows down performance significantly when your start to use more and more layers. One tip is to merge the layers you know your absolutely not going to change to try and keep the file size to a min.

[RexK_Cozumel]

Just dont make a duplicate layer of the entire original image. If you do that then the files get huge and will really bog down your computer after a while.

[sybren]

A completely different angle on the non-destructive editing comes from Bibble Labs in the form of their editing program Bibble. It stores your edits in a plain text file next to your original photo (RAW or JPEG, it doesn't matter which). If you later decide you want to change something, you can always do that, irregardless of what you changed. It's a really nice program, ever since I started using it I haven't used anything else. There are also training videos available.

Bibble isn't only good in the non-destructive area, it's also a very good RAW importer which produces photos of excellent clarity and colour.