Archiving

[tenlientl]

Hey. I had a problem a few months ago.

I was working on a RAW, saved it to a .JPG. I then archived that RAW into an external hard drive, but now that I want to print the photo, the first .JPG was too small so I wanted to get the full resolution. However, when I came back to the RAW file, my changes were gone and I have yet to recreate/reedit.

I was told to auto-convert my NEFs to .DNG so I don't get this problem (when I move the files around, the edits will still be there).

I use Lightroom, btw. Btw, if it's true, will the .DNG still be the "same" if I use it on another computer (or at least if I ever reformat).

Thank you.

 

[Big Mike]

Lightroom edits are stored in a 'sidecar' file. Lightroom doens't actually touch the original files until you output them somewhere.
If you move the images files to a different location, you need to let Lightroom know where to find them, so they can be associated with the sidecar file. (you may also need to move the sidecar files).

So if you have the images in your LR catalog, just re-associate them with the new location of the file, and see where that gets you.

 

[tenlientl]

Actually.. I was googling more stuff on this whole NEF vs DNG problem of mine and realized it's easy to work with these so called XMP sidecars. I might benefit more from just saving those along with my RAW (although DNG still intrigue me because they're smaller size).