Destructive and Non-Destructive Editing

Destructive Editing

Imagine that you were working on the image above in Photoshop. You work sharpen some parts of the image, brighten the colors, use the spot healing brush here and there to make it exactly as you would like it. You finally are finished and you notice that a certain tree doesn’t look quite right and makes the image now look obviously tampered with. You go back to try and fix it but you can’t go back that far. These changes are now permanent and you have to start over completely. This is know as destructive editing. This is editing that overwrites the original image data, so once you go far enough past the programs history limit, you can’t undo what you have done.

Non-Destructive Editing

This is where the beauty of non-destructive editing comes in. This a form of editing in which you do not overwrite the original data of the image. You can always go back on any edits that were made if need be. This also allows you to keep the images original resolution intact. The last thing is there isn’t one single way of editing in a non-destructive way. There are many ways for you to reach your desired result.