The two hardest words for a RAW photographer: DECIDE and STOP
RAW files offer huge technical advantages but can lead you into an editing limbo where everything can be changed and nothing is finished.
Software which doesn’t make any direct changes to the pixels in a photo, but saves processing instructions alongside it. These instructions are used to change the appearance of the photo when it’s displayed and can be applied permanently to a new ‘exported’ image.
Read more: Non-destructive editing explained | Metadata explained
RAW files offer huge technical advantages but can lead you into an editing limbo where everything can be changed and nothing is finished.
Have you ever browsed your back catalog of images, re-discovered one with some edits that you really love… but you can’t remember how you did it? For someone like me who uses all sorts of software for all sorts of different techniques (and has a memory like mine) it’s a real issue.
The DxO Nik Collection 3 brings non-destructive editing to the Nik plug ins for the first time. This is how it was done, and what you need to know.
Non-destructive editing sounds like a no-brainer. This is where your software stores your edits as processing instructions which can be updated, changed or removed at any time. But is it really that easy?
Traditional photo editing is ‘destructive’. That means every adjustment you make permanently changes the pixels in the photo and there’s no way back unless you’ve saved a copy of the original and you’re willing to start again. ‘Non-destructive’ editing is fully reversible. You can go back and undo or redo all of your editing work at any point in the future. Naturally, there’s a catch
I had a horrible thought today. Like everyone else, I’ve been saying non-destructive editing is fantastic. It’s smart, it’s efficient, and it changes the way we work. It’s the most important innovation in digital imaging this century… But wait a minute. What if I had to stop using Lightroom or Aperture tomorrow? How many images…