what do you do with your RAW files?

[MrJones]

so.. I just finished cleaning my photo library on my computer.
deleted many many RAW files which I've edited and saved as JPG a long time ago and just didn't delete the original RAWs for some reason.
when I say many many files, I'm talking about 100GB of space that opened up
what do you do with your files after a photo shoot?
do you keep the RAWs or just the edited JPGs?
if you are keeping them.. for how long?
I must admit it was a scary process and even though I haven't touched them for a few months.. I'm still scared I'll need one of them sometime

[kcoppock]

It's like keeping film negatives. I keep primarily RAW images (I don't shoot RAW+JPG unless I know I'm going to need some quick and easily shareable versions) and only process them as I need them. JPG files, no matter how high a compression you set, are still compressed. While it's usually not a visible difference, if you ever want to edit them again, you do NOT want to work from an already processed JPG. Work from an original 12-bit (or 14-bit, depending on your camera) image (though it will be processed as a 16-bit image in Photoshop) and make your changes there.

My suggestion would be to keep the RAWs, and buy another hard drive. JPGs just don't cut it when it comes to post-processing.

[High_Speed]

I save them? Back them up, even! That's like throwing away your film negatives! That's a no-no. You never know down the road when you may want to revisit that picture.

[RichardTaylor]

Only the best of my personal stuff, or coverage of an event (just the keepers) I keep them on duplicated (2) of external hard drives and 2 DVDs.

You never know when you may need them, especially if you have put them on the net.
For example; recently a publisher of a childrens book asked for a copy of a pelican pic I took back in dec 2007.

[MrJones]

are you keep all of your photo shoots RAWs?
I'm talking about paying jobs, wedding, seniors.. do you keep them after the client chose the ones he wants?
do you keep all of them or just the ones you presented?
let's say you went out on a senior photo shoot. you shot 300 photos and out of them you have 100 that are "good".
do you keep all 300 RAWs? do you keep just the 100 RAWs that are good? do you keep 100 JPGs?
just curious cause if you're doing a few jobs a week, no hard drive will be able to keep up with you.

[kcoppock]

Originally Posted by MrJones

are you keep all of your photo shoots RAWs?
I'm talking about paying jobs, wedding, seniors.. do you keep them after the client chose the ones he wants?
do you keep all of them or just the ones you presented?
let's say you went out on a senior photo shoot. you shot 300 photos and out of them you have 100 that are "good".
do you keep all 300 RAWs? do you keep just the 100 RAWs that are good? do you keep 100 JPGs?
just curious cause if you're doing a few jobs a week, no hard drive will be able to keep up with you.

I can't speak from the standpoint of a professional photographer, but if I know a photo is bad (underexposed, overexposed, out of focus, subject cut off, near-exact duplicate of another in a sequence) I'll delete it. Other than that, I keep the rest.

[MeAgain]

if space is an issue I would delete the .jpg long before the .crw. I can always make another .jpg should I wish but once I delete the .crw that's it. I purchased an external hd and I store my .crws there.

[katia]

i keep ALL my RAW files, though now i'm questioning that. i shoot in RAW+JPEG all the time, because my camera is always just sitting around in the living room, and i take a lot of snapshot type photos. stuff that i just want to quickly put up on Facebook, or photos for classified ads.

so i keep the JPEGs on my actual harddrive, (for uploading to the many forums i belong to, photobucket, etc) and then every few months i transfer all the RAW's over to my external. lately i've also been burning all the RAW files to DVD.

my RAW folder on my external is sorted by

2011
01. January
02. February

and so on. so far it's a very effective system, though i would absolutely love to go through ALL of my RAW's and delete them, because i probably only actually need about 5%.

but if ya got the space, use it!

[High_Speed]

Originally Posted by kcoppock

I can't speak from the standpoint of a professional photographer, but if I know a photo is bad (underexposed, overexposed, out of focus, subject cut off, near-exact duplicate of another in a sequence) I'll delete it. Other than that, I keep the rest.

What he said. If it's an image I absolutely know I'll never be able to recover (ie way over or under exposed, or way out of focus), I might delete it. Otherwise, I keep original RAW/DNG of all my shots.

I'm no pro, but I would imagine if I did a lot of client work, I would definitely keep that stuff. Who knows, 20 years down the road the persons kids may come look me up saying their parent passed away or was in an accident and they were hoping I had some pictures I took of them, etc....just saying as an example.

I would hate to have to say, "Sorry, I deleted those 20 years, 11 months ago, because it was taking up too much storage space that I needed to save more porn."

[Jim Bryant]

As soon as I finish a shoot. I edit selects, covert to Tiffs, pp in CS5 and save a copy as a Tiff and another as a jpeg. I them burn to DVD and copy into an external HD. And yes....I delete all out of focus images, as few as they are.