This is the mother of photography basics: Never work on your original image files. It's just too risky.

Not convinced? Consider a scenario in which you finish making all of your adjustments and enhancements and then you accidentally press Save rather than Save As. Uh oh! Your original may be lost forever—unless you shoot RAW files, which always remain as RAW files.

Lose that magical "first kiss" or a "secret kiss" photo, and the bride and groom will be more than a bit upset with you!

So it's absolutely critical to always—always—back up your image files. Save them in at least two places, because chances are ... your hard drive will eventually crash, sending your one-of-a-kind pictures into "never never land" forever.

My advice is to back up these precious files using an accessory hard drive, which can accommodate more files than a DVD. Also, the write speed to a hard drive is much quicker than it is to a DVD.

Of course, the bride and groom may want a DVD of their wedding pictures. That's great; make it. And when you burn their DVD, make an extra copy for yourself ... in case their DVD gets scratched and becomes unreadable. Or, if you're feeling generous, offer the newlyweds a special deal on two DVDs!

Okay, I know the title of this tip is a bit dramatic, but I want to make an important point. When you open an image in Photoshop, the first thing I suggest you do is stop. Take your hand off your mouse (or set down your stylus) and look at the image. Look carefully. Pay attention to what you like about the image and what you dislike.

After doing this, you can think more productively about what tools and adjustments and techniques the photograph requires.

Jumping into edit mode too quickly will ultimately slow you down in most cases. Not thinking things through often results in a need to either start over or go back several steps to get it right.

Here is one before-and-after example. Thinking about cropping, boosting saturation and using Levels before getting to work helped me visualize the end result ... and get to it (somewhat) efficiently.

Some wedding photographers shoot only JPEGs—mostly for speed, because writing RAW files to a card takes longer than JPEGs. Working on RAW files is also more time consuming.

So JPEG photographers are pleased with their results, as are their clients ... if the exposures are right on! If JPEG images are over- or underexposed, detail can be lost forever in the highlight and shadow areas, respectively.

RAW files are more forgiving than JPEGs when it comes to exposure. That is, details in highlight and shadow areas of RAW files can usually be rescued with Adobe Camera RAW (ACR) or Adobe Lightroom or Apple Aperture. All of these products offer tools to expertly fine tune RAW files.

The ACR window, which changes to reveal even more options as you click through the adjustment tabs, offers all the basic adjustments a wedding photographer (and any photographer, for that matter) could hope for. With it, you end up with images that not only have better exposure, but also are more creative, more dramatic and unique than without it.

Simply put, RAW processing is a very powerful image-editing tool. As you'll see in the following section, it can even enable you to do things in Photoshop like change the direction of light in a scene. How cool is that?!

Attention JPEG shooters. Good news! You can process your photographs in ACR, too; although you'll still be working with a file that has less information than a RAW file. In Photoshop, go to File > Open and choose Camera RAW as the Format. Your image will open in ACR and you'll be able to begin adjusting your image with this program.

Understanding image resolution is an essential part of being a photographer. The bride and groom will likely have no clue about file size and resolution issues. Why would they? It's up to you to determine the correct image resolution, so your clients get the photographs they're hoping for.

My advice is to save a copy of each file at its highest resolution. That way, the couple can choose to have a BIG print made without a loss in detail. What's more, if they want to print only part of an image, you'll have more pixels available to create that print.

For an 8×10-inch print and other standard album sizes, an image resolution of 360 PPI at the print size is sufficient.

If you make a print at too low of a resolution, your image will look pixilated, as shown in the image on the right.

For web sites, which typically accommodate images around 4×5 inches, a resolution of 100 PPI at the image size is fine.

To change the size of an image, go to the Image Size window. When upsizing, choose Bicubic Smoother; choose Bicubic Sharper when downsizing. These settings will give you the best results.

The layers function is perhaps the most important aspect of Photoshop for the creative photographer. What is a layer? Well, think of a layer cake ... In Photoshop, each layer is a different version of your original image.

For example, you may have a Hue/ Saturation layer, where you boost the saturation of an image. The Levels layer may show adjustments to the brightness, contrast and tones. Other layers will handle other functions of image adjustment.

One of the main advantages of working with Adjustment Layers is that you can use layer masks to paint in-and-out effects for selective enhancements. Another benefit is that you can delete a layer if you don't like your adjustment, or you can go back and change it tomorrow ... or years from now.

After creating a file that contains several layers, you'll want to save it either as a TIFF file, a PSD or a JPEG.

When you save a file as a TIFF, all those adjustment layers are saved individually, so you can go back and change or delete your adjustments at a later date. Just keep in mind that TIFF files and PSD files take up more space on your hard drive than JPEGs.

When you save a file as a JPEG, you flatten the image and consolidate the file. Your layers are lost forever when the file becomes a JPEG, but this is an ideal format for images you deliver to clients who want to post their wedding pictures online, e-mail them and/ or create a digital slideshow on DVD. Given their smaller file size, JPEGs are best for these electronic applications.

Before printing, you'll also want to flatten your images by saving them as JPEGs to minimize file size and decrease printing time.

Thinking and working selectively on an image is an important part of the creative Photoshop process. Many times you want to sharpen, lighten or darken only part of an image. That is thinking selectively.

Working selectively involves working on only those areas. You can do that easily when you create an adjustment layer and use a layer mask. Some examples of adjustment layers and layer masks are only a few pages away.

In this example, I selectively darkened the bride's overexposed gown and then I sharpened it (and her). As far as the background is concerned, you can see that I selectively lightened it.

The Tool bar on the left side of the Photoshop window provides you options for adjusting your image in various ways. Yet it's the controls on the Options bar, located at the top of the Photoshop window that helps you fine-tune your tools.

Play around with the Options bar, and you'll see that your capacity for creatively using your Photoshop tools is greatly increased.

One idea for learning about Tools and Options is to try learning a new one each day ... or maybe one each week. Give yourself time to absorb each new technique. In less than a year, you'll know as much as most pros.

Photoshop adjustments can help you make virtually any change to a photograph that your heart desires. But the sheer number of options can be a bit overwhelming at first. What's more, some of them, like Levels and Curves, can get you to basically the same place but with subtle differences.

My advice is to experiment with all the adjustments on just a few images so that you can learn how the adjustment works. Click on all those little fly-out arrows to see even more options.

As with Photoshop's Tools and Options, try to master one at a time ... even though you will be tempted to try to learn them all overnight.

All RAW files need sharpening, as do some JPEGs. However, it's important to know that JPEG files are already sharpened when they come out of your camera. The saturation and contrast have also been increased, which I personally don't prefer.

When you think about sharpening an image, plan to make this your final step in the image-editing process. You want to sharpen last because other adjustments, such as Levels and Curves, which need to be made early on, affect image sharpness.

I like to use Smart Sharpen (Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen). It offers more control than Unsharp Mask (Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask), which was the tried-and-proven sharpening method before Smart Sharpen was introduced.

It's natural to want to sharpen an image to make it pop with detail. It's also tempting to boost saturation for a vivid image. However, if you sharpen an image too much, it will look pixilated.

My advice when sharpening is to view the image at 100% on your monitor and gradually sharpen it to your liking. Just don't overdo it.

Another idea is to crop your image to show only the most important part of the scene. Sharpen that part of the file and make a print. Check it out. If it looks good, it's probably okay to apply that level of sharpening to the entire image. Understand, however, that sharpening an image increases noise in shadow areas more than it does in highlights.

As far as saturation goes, if you overdo it, you can lose detail in very saturated areas—such as bouquet photos that include very deep red, yellow or orange areas. Here, less is often better.

Hey! Remember I mentioned thinking selectively a few pages back? Well, that goes for sharpening and increasing saturation, too.

Want to have even more creative control in Photoshop? I'm thinking you do, because it can give you an edge over your competition and show your clients you are indeed an artist. Using plug-ins is an easy way to achieve this.

Plug-ins offer artistic effects at the click of a mouse or tap of a stylus. They help you add effects—such as changing the lighting, color, grain, tone and other aspects of your image—that would otherwise take you hours to create. They can be downloaded from the Internet or loaded to your computer via CD.

OnOne software (www.ononesoftware.com) offers two of my favorite plug-ins: PhotoTools and PhotoFrame. Within these two plug-ins, you'll find hundreds of effects. Here I used the Davis Wow Muted Colors in PhotoTools and then applied one of the camera frames on PhotoFrame Professional.

Play with plug-ins. They range in price—from under $100 to a few hundred dollars—but the time they'll save you in digital editing ... combined with the quality of your results ... guarantees the investment will pay off.