Summary

It's always been something of a dry subject, but setting up a computer for quality photo editing tasks is not as simple a task as many might imagine—and of course, it's far more demanding on your equipment than simply doing a few emails and surfing the internet!

This chapter explained the basics of setting up a computer: adding memory, choosing hard drives, considering backup drive options, as well as learning about color spaces, and calibrating the monitor so that what we see onscreen is an accurate depiction of what we photographed. It's a big topic but once understood, it will send you out into the editing universe well prepared.

We also took note of the many tools found in Elements Organizer that are designed to help us keep track of our ever-increasing photo and video media collections. And again, although this is often seen as being as exciting as cleaning the bathroom or filling out a tax return, once done, you'll find yourself on top of the image cataloging process, thus making future expansions to your image collections significantly less problematic.

And we haven't even edited an image yet! But coming up in the next chapter, you'll find a heap of great information about adding a range of basic and easy edits to images—all of which can produce brilliant results: dealing with RAW files, saving files, cropping, straightening, lightening, darkening, and a great deal more. It doesn't take long to produce truly impressive results with this editing application.