essential skills: digital photography in available light
- Archiving and backing up your work
Now that you are feeling organized and optimized you should back-up or archive your work onto a
DVD or external hard drive. In fact it makes sense to back-up the work twice and keep one copy in
a different location. These are your master fi les from which all of your future work will be generated.
Before we start moving and burning however it is essential (in order to keep you caffeine intake
down to something reasonable) to hit the command ‘Export Cache’ if you have not chosen the
Distributed cache preference. An exported cache will sit in the image folder so that Bridge does not
have to generate a new set of previews the next time you point your Adobe software at this folder
(even if it is in a different location or being accessed by a different computer). If you are using ‘File
Browser’ look under the ‘File’ menu in the Browser’s dialog box. If you are using ‘Bridge’ go to
‘Tools > Cache > Export Cache’.
Remember > Export a cache to avoid re-caching a folder.
If you are backing up your image folder to a CD/DVD you can create a cover to help you locate
the fi les quickly when your CD buries itself in amongst your collection of 549 other CDs. Make a
selection of the images you want to back up and then proceed to the automated feature ‘Contact
Sheet II’. Specify a CD sized document size (12cm x 12cm) and a suitable printing resolution
(200–300 ppi) and click OK - I feel another coffee coming on! I usually specify 16 thumbnails on a
cover. When the fi rst contact sheet is full, Photoshop automatically creates additional pages until
all of the images in the folder are represented.