Quote Originally Posted by Alan9940 View Post
Don't know about Mr. Lee, but this sounds a lot like the "Guide File Workflow" that West Coast Imaging outlined some 10-15 years ago. The only real restriction to working this way is that all layers must be adjustment layers, only; you cannot have any pixel-based layer. Once you've finished your edit, you simply copy all the adjustment layers to the full resolution file, then complete for final output. I would guess that nowadays, with all the desktop computing power we enjoy, this workflow is not needed so much.
I just remember getting the info from his site. He may have provided a link to a you tube file (It think he did) yes, you do need to use only adjustment layers. As for computing power, I have a 2012 MacPro with 32GB of memory and 20 TB of disk storage. My color files will get upwards of 60GB +. Yes, I spend a lot of time on a file when I find an image I like. My Mac handles it okay, just takes a while writing and loading the file. I hope to upgrade in the next year or so for the latest and greatest MacPro. But even then, I would still use the method outlined above to speed up the actual editing.

Any pixel level fixes needed at that point could be done to the file and recorded as an Action, that way you could redo your pixels adjsustment/fix steps after creating the full size resolution image if you so desired