Transitions

Present day computers, programs, and operating systems may start off standardized when they ship from the factory; however, once they are bestowed to a creative individual they are molded and formed into something altogether different. They are shaped into a personalized tool that takes weeks, months, or years to develop. Consumers grasp on to dying technology and software because they have so much deeply invested in the system. We have all experienced it on some level or another. The computer crashes or needs to be restored so we back everything up, or so we think, and re-install our operating system of choice and we are greeted with a sterile and unfamiliar interface with nothing of ourselves looking back. I have met individuals who are still running an installation of windows 98 (running 10 years now) because they know where everything is and don’t want to start over. I have also met people like myself who do some kind of a backup – spring cleaning every year or so to keep the computer clutter at a minimal.

So what does all this have to do with photography? It isn’t so much about cameras – instead it is about digital tools we love to tweak and configure in Photoshop. We spend hours tweaking actions, building brushes, setting up swatches and when we blow our operating system away and pop in the CS3 DVD to get up and running again our familiar tools are no where to be found. WHAT IS A PHOTOGRAPHER TO DO? All this can be avoided with a little bit of planning a preparation on our part.

Backing Up In Photoshop:
All the sections in CS3 use the same basic setup so I have only attached screen shots for the first one – swatches. The same technique should be used in all you areas where you have created a brush that you want to keep (or set of brushes you like), etc.

Step 1: Click on the menu (see photos)
Step 2: Click on save _______ (blank will change based on what you are saving)
Step 3: Save to your desktop or wherever you can get to quickly and easily
Step 4: Exit Photoshop and save created files to a CD, DVD, Flash Drive, Hard Drive, Web

Server, Etc – the key is put it some place you will be able to access when moving to a new compute or rebuilding your existing machine.