By now you should be making some headway in getting all your pictures tagged, sorted, dated, and arranged just the way you want them. It would be a terrible thing to lose all that hard work! So you want to make sure you back up your catalog. Fortunately, Photoshop Elements has all you need to do this.

Elements can create a full backup containing everything in your catalog (photos, video and audio clips, creations, tags, notes, and the catalog file itself), or it can create archive disks contain only selected items that you want to give to friends or family.

Also, to save time, Elements can do incremental backups where it only backs up the items that have been added or changed since your last backup. You can back up your catalog to various types of media:

CD or DVD - Most computers these days have a CD or DVD burner installed. I suggest using rewritable (RW) media for your regular backups since they will eventually become outdated and you'll want to start with a fresh full backup every so often. The problem with this type of media (especially CDs) is that it can take a lot of disks to do a full backup. Also, when you do incremental backups, Elements uses a new disk for each incremental backup--whether your last disc was full or not. So, the more often you do backups, the more discs you're going to need!

A Second Hard Disk - This is by far the most convenient way to backup up. You can back up to a second drive installed in your computer, or a portable external drive attached to your computer through a USB or Firewire port. But it has to be a second physical hard disk--not just a separate partition on a single disk, which wouldn't give you any protection from a hard drive crash.

Another computer on your network - If you're going to backup to another computer on the network, you will need to map the network share to a drive letter on the computer you'll be backing up from. This assigns a drive letter to the network location, which is the only way you can choose a backup destination in Photoshop Elements. To map a network share:

1. Open Windows Explorer to My Computer or My Network Places from the start menu.
2. Go to Tools > Map Network Drive.
3. Choose an available drive letter from the Drive menu.
4. If you know the path to the file share, type it in the "Folder" field, or click Browse and navigate to find it.
5. Make sure the "Reconnect at logon" box is checked to make the mapping permanent.
6. Click Finish to apply the mapping.

Once you have assigned a letter to the network share, doing a backup is exactly the same a backing up to another hard disk.
A warning about backing up to hard drives: Using a hard drive for back up is certainly faster and more convenient than backing up to CD or DVD, but if you store the backup hard drive in the same location as your PC, you are only being protected from disk failure. A hard drive is still susceptible to theft and/or natural disaster. If you do use a hard drive or network share for backups, I recommend you also regularly burn CD or DVD backups that you can store in a separate, safe location. It's also a good idea to occasionally burn archive discs that you can pass on to friends and family. These won't include your catalog, but at least you'll still have your photos if the worst ever does happen.

Next Page --> Step-by-Step Guide to Backing Up Your Catalog