When you are working in the Editor, all changes are applied to a picture’s image data directly, and when the picture is saved, these changes are stored in the picture file, irreversibly changing the picture. Non-destructive adjustments, on the other hand, leave the picture’s source data unchanged; all that is saved is a list of the individual changes, and these are only applied afterwards, at the moment when the picture needs to be saved. Even saving only records this list of changes to disk, leaving the original picture untouched. Thanks to this, you can change the list of adjustments later at any time, or even remove them all to go back to the original picture.
For non-destructive adjustments, use Develop. There is no need to confirm or save changes when you are done editing; changes are automatically saved when you move on to the next picture, switch to a different section of the program, or exit the program. The remaining sections of the program automatically reflect any adjustments to a picture that you have made in Develop. Thus if you’d like to work on a picture with advanced tools that are not contained in Develop, just open it in the Editor and continue working. When you need to make use of a picture outside of Zoner Photo Studio, and you have used non-destructive adjustments on the picture, you must export the picture by clicking Export, which applies the adjustments you’ve made and saves the picture to a location of your choice in a format of your choice.
The other option is to switch the Develop module into destructive editing mode. In this mode, when you are done editing, you are called to save changes back into the original picture. Saving changes irreversibly applies all of the edits to the picture, and during this operation, the original picture is replaced with the new one. See also Destructive and Non-destructive Image Editing.
Non-destructive Adjustments Save You Time and Disk Space