Should I keep all these files?

[photog1107]

I am trying to organize and manage my hard drive space, as well as come up with a good process of editing/printing moving forward.

In my photo archives I have thousands of my original photos: Some are RAW files and some are hi-res jpg (jpgs ranging from 5-8 MB each)--as well as my final processed, exported jpgs that are closer to 1-2 MB each. So I have, in many cases, two of the same image.

Obviously, the photos I have already processed and exported are the ones I am happy with on screen, and for all intents, I am done editing them, but the file sizes are quite a bit smaller because I exported them a year or more ago before I thought too much about whether I'd want to print them later. So my question is this: For purposes of printing, should I retain all the original files because the file sizes are larger than my processed and compressed photos? Or does file size matter when it comes to print quality? In other words, will a 7 MB photo show demonstrably better print quality than its exact replica in a 2 MB file?

All things being equal, I'd love to free up hard drive space and keep the smaller files only.. but not at the cost of losing print quality later.

Thanks for any input or elucidation on this topic.

[Doug Sundseth]

The answer depends on what size you are printing at. If you're printing a 4x6, you're unlikely to see much (if any) difference between a 4MPx image and a 12MPx image. If you're printing a 20x30, that 4MPx image is going to pixelate much more than the 12MPx one would.

Further, you might find yourself noticing something the next time you go to print the image that you can fix easily if you have the source. Or you might find yourself better at post processing in 2 years than you are now.

I'd never throw out the source files for images I actually like enough to print.

[photog1107]

Thanks, I can definitely see the wisdom in that. Now I just have to decide whether I should keep my CR2 files or whether best-quality jpgs are sufficient.

[photog1107]

Btw, Doug, checked out your Flickrstream... very impressive! Loved the moon shot, especially! Kudos!

[Doug Sundseth]

Thank you, that's very kind of you to say.

[IABoomer]

Drive space is absurdly cheap these days. There's basically no excuse to ever run out of drive space when you can buy a 1TB drive for under $100.

Store the best quality files you can, because once you delete those original RAW files, you're not getting them back. I've got some older shots that were shot in JPEG and edited that I'd love to go back with Lightroom and do something different with, but I can't because I saved my edits over the originals.

RAW files are like your negatives. Even if you made a nice print from one, you'd still keep the negative in case you wanted to print something later.

[G'Hopper]

Get some external hard drives and store the best quality stuff. Hell, for that matter, store everything. It's cheap enough.

[photog1107]

Thanks everyone for weighing in. I hear ya... external space is cheap, I realize, so it makes sense to keep the originals and not sweat it. I was just trying to have some rationality to what I was archiving, but in retrospect, it's not worth trashing something you might want to access again. Appreciate the comments.