There is one thing, and only one thing, that I do to each photo I take.  No, it’s not sharpening or a Levels adjustment.  It’s a backup.  And sometimes I backup twice.

Mozy provides unlimited backup for $4.95 per month.  That’s a great deal, considering that I have just under 200 gigabytes backed up there now.  They also offer 2 gigabytes of storage for free!

When I first started shooting in digital, I backed up my pictures on an annual basis to a DVD.  When my first child was 2 1/2, my computer crashed and we lost everything.

No problem, I thought, all my pictures are backed up.  But, when I tried to restore them, the DVD was corrupt.

All my pictures of the first years of my first child’s life.  And the last pictures of my dad’s life.  And the only pictures of them together.  It was devastating.  I was prepared to page a huge sum of money to a data restoration service.  Luckily, even they weren’t able to repair the hard drive.

The story ended well, because I found some relatively cheap software that restored corrupt DVDs. 

However, it was a good lesson to learn and I have been obsessive about backing up since then.  I backup both to DVDs and to an online service called Mozy.   

Online backup provides a huge sense of security for me, because my DVDs can get lost, scratched, corrupted, or destroyed in a fire. 

I shoot in Raw, and each of my pictures is about 10 megabytes.  That’s huge!  But Mozy’s unlimited data storage is a great deal at $4.95 per month.  I have just under 200 gigabytes in pictures, videos, music and documents backed up to Mozy currently.

And the 2 gigabytes of free storage is a great solution for someone who doesn’t have many pictures yet, or who just wants to try Mozy out.

Mozy’s set up process is simple, and you can schedule your backups to run on a regular basis.  Mine run once a week, and I often backup at other times too, if I have taken lots of pictures.

The first time you backup can be very slow, depending on how much data you have.  We’re talking weeks here.  But I wasn’t able to find any online backup solutions that were quicker.  I would recommend that you backup in increments that first time.  But now, my backups usually take no more than a day or two, worst case.

And the great thing about Mozy is that you can configure the amount of computer bandwidth it uses.  If a backup is running while you’re on the computer, you can move a simple slider that maximizes the computer processing speed for your work.  And when you’re not on the computer, increase Mozy’s speed so that it can backup as quickly as possible.

I hope you all are backing up your precious pictures.  If not, check out this offer:  2GB Totally Free Online Backup! Compliments of Mozy

So now, there are 3 installments left in this Photoshop workflow tutorial:  running actions, adding vignettes, and sharpening.  Subscribe to Digital Photography For Moms so that you don’t miss any of them!