Hello everyone, welcome to this Adobe certified training video. And today we're going to be talking about destructive editing or non-destructive editing in Photoshop. And the synopsis would be that destructive editing permanently alters a picture, whereas non-destructive editing allows us to turn our edits off so that we can see our original image. And you might be wondering... Why would I ever want to destructively edit a picture if I can do it non-destructively?
And the answer is, sometimes it's useful, and also sometimes we might want to do something that we can't do non-destructively. For example, cropping, right, where we permanently alter the size of an image, is a destructive edit. So if I had this picture here and I just wanted to get rid of this knife, you know, I can just crop it, and now I've cropped the image, but that's a permanent change.
I can undo that change, but if Photoshop crashes or if I save this project and come back to it, I can't undo it anymore, right? We need to think of destructive editing as something that permanently alters the image. So cropping, for example, is destructive editing, but again, it's useful. And you guys might already crop pictures such as on your phones when you take a picture or in... Lightroom or in Photoshop if you just want to really quickly reframe your image.
So that's an example of destructive editing. Destructive editing might also be using the eraser tool. If I have this painting here, right, I've painted on this layer and I get my eraser tool, sometimes I just want to erase something. Generally in photographs, we don't want to erase, but it's definitely useful.
So erasing is destructive editing. Non-destructive editing gives me the ability to get my image back. And what I'm going to show you in this video is some different examples where you can do something destructively or non-destructively. And there's a bunch of different ways in Photoshop that we can do that. So the first is about getting rid of parts of an image, not cropping, but removing things from our picture.
So let's say I have this picture right here where I have this background and I have this plate. All images are gotten from Pexels. They're royalty free, which is a great website. The first is if I get my eraser tool, I can just start to erase, right?
Let's say I just wanted this plate by itself. I could try erasing the plate or everything around the plate. And this is destructive editing, right?
I'm permanently removing pixels. Again, I can control Z, but that only works within me having the program open. and having the ability to go back a certain number of steps.
So again, erasing is destructive editing. Now, I'm not doing a great job here. I find erasing very difficult, but this is a way that I could remove the background.
I'm going to control Z and go back as well. We can also mask things. Masking allows me to hide parts of an image in a non-destructive way.
We're not worried about how we mask right now. We're just worried about the idea of masking and masking it means I've gotten rid of the background but I could always get it back and what is a mask in our layers panel right here we have a mask and the mask is black and white and black is what's hidden and white is what is revealed and I can always disable my mask or I can delete my mask and if I saved the project and closed photoshop and opened it again My mask will still be there, meaning it's non-destructive. I can always turn it off or delete it.
So in terms of removing specific things from an image, masking can be more useful than erasing because it's non-destructive and I can always get it back, which is really nice. So that's one example of destructive versus non-destructive editing, right? It would be the eraser versus masking.
And again, we're not worried about how we mask. We just want to know that masking exists. Another example of destructive editing is painting on a layer. If I get my paintbrush and let's say I wanted to paint some yellow onto this layer and I start painting, this is destructive editing, right?
I'm permanently altering the pixels of my picture. There's no way for me to turn this painting off. I could control Z, but that's not turning it off.
That's undoing. And if I got my eraser and I wanted to erase the painting, you're going to notice that it's actually erasing the original image. And that's because I've painted on the pixels. I've painted on the layer itself. So a non-destructive way that we can quote unquote.
Paint is just by creating a new blank layer. So now if I paint on that layer, right, I'm altering the pixels of that layer, but not of the image beneath. So I could hide the layer. I could erase the painting if I painted more than I wanted to.
Things like that. And so creating a new blank layer and doing any kind of painting. on that layer is a good way that we can paint in a non-destructive manner.
Again, we don't want to paint on our image. We want to try and create a new layer if we want it to be non-destructive. This is destructive because it's on the layer. This is non-destructive because it's on a different layer.
And I could just hide the layer. I could erase from that layer. Or I could delete the entire layer without deleting my picture. Another example of destructive versus non-destructive editing is in terms of how we change the colors and the brightness of pictures. So when I adjust an image, if I go up to my adjustments and I just change the brightness of this image by doing this.
doing a brightness adjustment. That's a destructive edit. There's no way for me to turn that off, right?
There's literally nothing I can do in my layers panel to turn it off. Control Z is not the same as turning it off, right? It's undoing the move we just did. There's two ways.
that we can non-destructively color grade, color correct, brightness correct an image. The first is using adjustment layers down here. I could do the same thing, brightness contrast, and increase the brightness. You can see the brightness is increased on the picture, but I can turn it off.
I can adjust my brightness adjustment later. And I could delete it without deleting the original image. Another way that we can non-destructively color correct a picture is by converting our image to a smart object.
And when we convert something to a smart object, it makes it so that our image adjustments and our transforms are non-destructive. It's really useful. The problem with a smart object is we can't paint over it.
So you need to be aware that making a smart object isn't always the right thing to do. When I convert this layer to a smart object, and then do my adjustment this way do a brightness contrast you can see that in my layers panel now i have smart filters and i can turn that brightness contrast adjustment on or off and i can double click and I can go back into it to continue to adjust my already made adjustment. So this is non-destructive because I can turn it off and because I can edit it, but not converting it. to a smart object and doing the same thing is destructive because I can no longer turn it off and I can no longer edit it.
So as you can guess, there are multiple ways to do things in Photoshop and there's multiple ways that we can destructively or non-destructively edit an image. But things to know are cropping an image is destructive. Cropping is destructive. Painting on the actual image is destructive, right?
If I get my brush and I paint paint on the image that's destructive erasing an actual image is destructive doing adjustments on an image before converting it to a smart object is destructive right it's there I can't turn it off non-destructive would be painting on a new blank layer because I can turn it off non-destructive is masking an object because I can turn it off. I can get rid of my mask. Non-destructive is using adjustment layers because it's a layer I can turn off.
And non-destructive is converting to a smart object because when I make my adjustment, I can then turn it off. Right? I can turn it off. Or I can edit it.
We're not permanently altering the picture. So again, you might be asking, well, why would I ever do an adjustment that's destructive? And that's a good question.
Sometimes there's something really fast that you might want to do, and it's fine. Sometimes you might just want to erase some painting that you've done, or you might want to erase a strand of hair and you don't need to worry about masking it. Cropping is not something that we can do non-destructively. So cropping is an example of a destructive edit that can only be destructive that you might want to actually use.
Because cropping images is a good thing to do in terms of photography if part of your image isn't where it should be. we have something that shouldn't be there, or we want to straighten an image with the crop and straighten tool. So hopefully that helps with some of the differences between destructive and non-destructive editing, and this should help you on your certification test. Thanks for watching.