what do you save your photos as

[jann1033]

i am using up way to much space evidently.
as of now i save final edited photos as jpg 3.5-4 mb. tiff is 41 mb( i only save that way if i think i will want to change it sometime and really like the photo and don't want to have to start from scratch with the raw if i might want to edit it) and raw 7ish mb but i am using up so much space it's crazy...i have them now on a external drive that is 2/3 full. i save everything as the largest, non compressed file i can for that type of file...and i wonder if i am using more space than i really need to.

does everyone leave all their photos on the computer or do you burn a couple backup disks and delete them from the actual computer...i just see myself never having enough space if i continue the way i am going.
Thanks

 

[pxlbarrel]

That's a good question. I have kept everything...from the raw to the finished product...and I since I shoot raw and jpg at the same time, sometimes the jpg is doubled up. I have kept them on my hard drives since I have no idea how to back them up. I'm paranoid that if I put them on dvds, a year from now...or 10 years from now, the dvd will be unreadable. I've had it happen with data dvds so I'm just so iffy about it. There's something to be said about negatives, eh?

I'm gonna run out of external hard drives at some point...and quite frankly, photos aren't safe there either. What to do...what to do??

 

[handicap18]

I keep my RAW files and JPEG files. I also burn copies of each to DVD and have each on 2 different external HD's. IMO TIFF's are a waste of space. If you already have the original RAW file why also have a TIFF that is 7 times the size. Sure JPEG's are also redundant, but that is the file type that is downloaded to the web and sent to various camara places for printing. They are also smaller than RAW. I also use the JPEGs for the screen saver. I don't do a lot of editing and will just edit the original RAW file and then convert that to a JPEG. I can't imagine how much space I would need if I used TIFF's. Again, this is my opinion.

 

[Code]

I save the RAW (~10mb ea) and the finished JPG (95% quality, ~1-5mb ea) but I don't save the TIFFs. That makes it roughly 12.5gb per 1000 shots, which really isn't much considering the price of hard drives.

The main reason I delete the TIFF is I rarely find myself needing to go back to the edited TIFF -- if I am re-editing a shot for whatever reason, I am usually starting back at the RAW. But also, I backup my important stuff to a backup server nightly (incremental backup, only new/changed stuff gets sent) and it would take a ridiculous amount of time to backup each TIFF file on my cable connection.

One thing that has saved me a lot of disk space lately is deleting my rejected photos. I used to compulsively save every shot no matter what, but eventually got over my OCD and realized how stupid that was. Now the first thing I do when I load new photos into Lightroom is mark all the obvious rejects and then delete them.

 

[Anewman]

I save RAW files only(after uploading/printing/etc...)

I could produce the jpeg(or tiff) again in seconds, so I feel no need to save any.

 

[Goofyish]

My camera doesn't do raw files so I upload the jpg files and then convert them straight to Photoshop format. I then save them to DVD and an external disk drive

I only ever edit a copy of the original Photoshop files.

 

[0bli0]

i work completely in raw (using apple's Aperture and non-destructive edits). if i need to export images for a web upload, they're exported as jpg directly and generally not kept. i have a working copy and 2 backups.

scanned film is either hi-rez jpg or 'raw' scanner dump (high bpp tif files) loaded into Aperture (raw only for items that are printed larger than a3+ or on exhibition).

the raw files from the r-d1 (.ERF) are converted to adobe .dng files (because they are not natively supported in OSX. since the sensor is the same as a d-70s, i hack the raw.plist into thinking the files are from that camera.

note that lightroom works exactly the same (non-destructive edits with raw).

 

[Gdad]

One thing that has saved me a lot of disk space lately is deleting my rejected photos. I used to compulsively save every shot no matter what, but eventually got over my OCD and realized how stupid that was. Now the first thing I do when I load new photos into Lightroom is mark all the obvious rejects and then delete them.

This is exactly what I need to do- Just can't seem to quite get there.

 

[Groucho]

If you want to save a photo with no quality loss, use PNG instead of TIFF; that'll give you lossless compression and usually a far smaller file.

I've gone over to the Lightroom mentality and do virtually all my editing there, then export JPGs. When I get my next DSLR (which will have the capability to store photos right in DNG format or proprietary PEF format), I'm not sure which I'll choose - probably DNG unless they are larger than the PEFs.

 

[handicap18]

One thing that has saved me a lot of disk space lately is deleting my rejected photos. I used to compulsively save every shot no matter what, but eventually got over my OCD and realized how stupid that was. Now the first thing I do when I load new photos into Lightroom is mark all the obvious rejects and then delete them.

This is exactly what I need to do- Just can't seem to quite get there.

I'm in the same boat Jeff. I know I have a lot of pics that I will never use, either they're slightly out of focus or the lighting is off and it was part of a bracketing set and I don't need it. Many of these I wont even convert to JPEG, but there are a bunch that made it through and I should go and delete them.