Compressing photos

[rudeboy]

Hi everyone,firstly i hope i am posting this in the right place,anyway here goes.I would like to know what is the best way to save memory on my computer because of the amount of photos i am now taking,people talk about compressing them but im not sure how to do this and which is the best way.Also if i compress the photos i don´t want to lose the original size,hope some one out there can help.

Ok, someone mentioned to me about putting the photos in a winrar file(whatever that is)lol,will this save me memory on my laptop and also will i still beable to open the original size of photo.

Rudeboy(Chris).

[ravncat]

I recommend investing in an external hard drive...

Compressing JPG (or already compressed) photos won't get you too much, if they are uncompressed it can help, but will increase loading times significantly.

[gturner]

If it is a PC, get a second hard drive. I just bought a 3rd 2 TB drive for not much money

If a laptop - get an external drive

You should have another external drive as a backup anyway. If you dont... get on!

[Nik0nator]

I also second an external hard drive. It has two benefits it will free up some space on your computer and if anything happens to your computer the data on the external will be safe. Just keep in mind that the external is a hard drive and can also die. So if it's data you must have then you can upload th pictures to the web. There are a ton of different storage sites and photography based sites. If you're concerned with the qaulity of your pictures you definately want as little compression as possible. When pictures are compressed each time they are opened and closed they lose some of their details. This is why I shoot in RAW, then save it as a TIFF for easy editing with the final version saved as JPG at the highest quality setting. This gives me two versions that wont degrade over time if I need it in the future.