Format for Archiving

[MisterJolly]

New to digital. Been shooting in RAW (as recommended elsewhere). No problem getting RAW image into Photoshop Elements, but; What is the best format to convert to for archiving the original image?

[wulf]

The Adobe Digital Negative format (DNG) might be worth consideration, although it is still a bit too young to say whether it will become established as a long-term format. The advantage would be that your RAW files are no longer in a format that is tied to a particular make and model of camera.

I haven't actually used it though; does anyone have first hand experience?

Wulf

[dcclark]

I haven't used DNG either. I might recommend either plain old JPEG at a high level of quality, or else a format such as Photoshop's PSD, or Gimp's XCF, if you prefer lossless compression. Those are at least more time-tested, and likely to be easier to read many years in the future.

[wulf]

A high quality JPEG image suffers only very minor degradation from the compression. Another format might be PNG, which is a well documented lossless format. In either of those cases you will be losing some of the flexibility of the RAW file but it might be worth it (or having a more open format as a fallback option in case you can't open the RAW file in ten years time).

Wulf

[MisterJolly]

Thanks for your thoughts.

The DNG option is something that, coincidentally, gets mentioned in a video tutorial I watched recently in an online magazine - can't remember how/where I found it - but it was quite in-depth covering RAW conversion in Elements.

So I may be heading down that route.

Thanks again chaps.

[kirbinster]

As long as you keep your conversion software there really is no need to convert the format. When you convert you will loose certain embedded info that only the true raw will contain.

[wulf]

Originally Posted by kirbinster

As long as you keep your conversion software there really is no need to convert the format. When you convert you will loose certain embedded info that only the true raw will contain.

What about the change of systems over the years? For example, if your conversion software is Windows based, what bout when you want to step over to a Mac? Also, what if you regularly update and the author drops support for your camera?

That's why I think there is a place for a more universal format.

Wulf

[OsmosisStudios]

Originally Posted by wulf

What about the change of systems over the years? For example, if your conversion software is Windows based, what bout when you want to step over to a Mac? Also, what if you regularly update and the author drops support for your camera?

That's why I think there is a place for a more universal format.

Wulf

Wulf, RAW files are universal. I can take the same RAW file and put it on any machine (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc). They're also backwards compatible: Newer converters always take into account older cameras. I'd just keep them as RAW files.

[BCampbell]

Generally, for comprehensive archiving, you will want to save at least two files for each photo.

The RAW file from the camera -- you should never save changes to this file.

The edited file in your editor's native format -- this should be a non-destructive edit, preserving all your changes as layers.

The second is important; if you save all your edits non-destructively, you don't need to keep your final jpg or tiff file, you can easily and quickly recreate it. You can also, if you're smart about naming and organizing layers, preserve multiple different edits of your photo in the same file (there are also ways to do this with profiles, to track changes that led to a given output).

You could also save multiple edits as different files from your editor, that's a little less organized though.

This way you can always go back and exactly repeat the changes that led to your final output, and you will always have the untouched RAW file.

In practice, I generally don't do this, only for important projects. I would quickly chew through disk space if I saved both RAW and .xcf files for every photo. Generally I keep the unedited RAW and one or more final jpgs. The amount of editing I typically do is not so much that I can't roughly recreate any final product in a few minutes.

And of course, multiple backups, at least one off-site. And remember that digital information degrades over time, so "refresh" those backups periodically.

[MisterJolly]

Originally Posted by wulf

What about the change of systems over the years? For example, if your conversion software is Windows based, what bout when you want to step over to a Mac? Also, what if you regularly update and the author drops support for your camera?

That's why I think there is a place for a more universal format.

Wulf

That's certainly a concern I've been hearing.

Originally Posted by OsmosisStudios

Wulf, RAW files are universal. I can take the same RAW file and put it on any machine (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc). They're also backwards compatible: Newer converters always take into account older cameras. I'd just keep them as RAW files.

Is it not the case that 'RAW' files are brand specific? NEF for Nikon, etc., and without their continued support they'd become obsolete. Surely an archived (and fully portable) version would be preferable.

Forgive me, I think I'm learning fast, just hope I'm not learning wrong.


Incidentally, I found that tutorial I mentioned above. It's in/on Better Digital Photography.