Chapter 1. A Plan for Nondestructive Workflow

This chapter gives you an abbreviated overview of the workflow around which the rest of this book is structured. It's a sort of quick guide. More importantly, it orients you to the way this book builds itself on what is currently being called nondestructive workflow. Although the workflow buzzword has lately been thrown around with a variety of meanings, this workflow is very carefully structured so that you are guaranteed to be working in what will ultimately be the most productive and efficient way. It also guarantees that you will never have to start from scratch when you need a different interpretation of the same subject.

So what's nondestructive all about? Well, first of all, the procedure only starts with being nondestructive. Of course, certain operations, such as retouching or using special-effects filters, are maximally destructive. However, when it comes time to do such work, you will have already done all the completely nondestructive work that you can. Furthermore, you will have protected that nondestructive work, keeping it on separate layers within the same file, so you never need do it again. So if you ever want a different look in that respect, you can simply turn off that destructive layer, then create a new layer (or layers) from the nondestructive layers for the process required by the alternative operation.

Another thing that's all-important to efficient workflow is being able to track your images and their variationsthe DAM work. We're not swearing; DAM stands for digital asset management.

NOTE

The DAM topic in this book is much more abbreviated than in The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers by Peter Krogh (O'Reilly). On the other hand, you can do a lot of work here that will eventually blend with advanced techniques when employing the full scope of The DAM Book.

Something else that's different here: this book doesn't start with processing in Photoshop, but with planning your shoot to give the best and most data-rich images possible as a starting point. After all, it does you no good to work extensively on images that don't have the best potential right from the start.