Garbz
No longer a newbie, moving up!
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2003
- Messages
- 9,713
- Reaction score
- 203
- Location
- Brisbane, Australia
- Website
- www.auer.garbz.com
- Can others edit my Photos
- Photos NOT OK to edit
Jon_Are I don't understand the need to keep all your files. Resized ones? That's a 2 second job in photoshop. Signature? I've created an action to sign my images so for me it's again a 2 second job in photoshop.
Me (and this is my personal opinion) I don't re-edit images. I keep everything in RAW / PSD format till it's final and till I'm happy. When that happens I save it as JPEG full size, top quality, and delete all the other files. This won't work for you if you're the type to re-edit old images but I haven't the time to edit the images I take let alone re-edit old ones.
If I need to upload one then I'll open it resize it save it and upload it. If I need to print it I'll do the same. JPEG may be a lossy format but it's very tolerant to re-saving. Just don't play with the curves tool too much once you have a JPEG.
My opinions on files:
JPEG - This is the standard. Everyone excepts them. It'll be around at least until the internet explodes.
RAW - Horrid. Large. Holds all the original data yes, but given that each camera has it's own format I am not sure that Lightroom v8 in 2020 will still support my D200. So all the information may be lost. I would not recommend archiving this to anyone except a programmer who is capable of reverse engineering RAW formats.
TIFF - In 16bit it stores it all with lossless compression. But the files are still huge.
DNG - An open RAW format. Anyone with programming experience can implement this. If this starts ever getting traction (so far few camera manufacturers have taken it up) then I would recommend it to anyone who likes the ability to re-edit previous photos.
This is both right and wrong. JPEG eliminates things that can't be seen as part of the compression (ok we're all photographers here I'm assuming you leave the quality slider all the way up). So what you end up with is an image with a bitrate the just covers the visible colour range in sRGB, and an image with lot of the black and blue data clobbered. The reason being is that our eyes are so insensitive to black and blue it makes no visible difference. The end result is that if you save a JPEG it would look no different from a TIFF... probably around the first 5 or so times.
But then comes the problem. A JPEG is divided into small squares which are then described by the compression algorithm. If you re-save the same JPEG over and over again at some point along the way many of the compression algorithms crap themselves. With photoshop this happens somewhere between the 5th and the 10th file where suddenly you end up with hideous squares all over the place.
So you lose nothing of value saving a JPEG, you don't lose anything of value editing that JPEG (talking minor edits, like cropping or adding a watermark) and re-saving. However repeat the process about 5-10 times and suddenly it will crack and your image will suck. I haven't done a test to see if a substantial edit to the image will cause it not to screw up. I just know it screws up if you re-save the same image, close it, load it, and save it again about 5-10 times.
Me (and this is my personal opinion) I don't re-edit images. I keep everything in RAW / PSD format till it's final and till I'm happy. When that happens I save it as JPEG full size, top quality, and delete all the other files. This won't work for you if you're the type to re-edit old images but I haven't the time to edit the images I take let alone re-edit old ones.
If I need to upload one then I'll open it resize it save it and upload it. If I need to print it I'll do the same. JPEG may be a lossy format but it's very tolerant to re-saving. Just don't play with the curves tool too much once you have a JPEG.
My opinions on files:
JPEG - This is the standard. Everyone excepts them. It'll be around at least until the internet explodes.
RAW - Horrid. Large. Holds all the original data yes, but given that each camera has it's own format I am not sure that Lightroom v8 in 2020 will still support my D200. So all the information may be lost. I would not recommend archiving this to anyone except a programmer who is capable of reverse engineering RAW formats.
TIFF - In 16bit it stores it all with lossless compression. But the files are still huge.
DNG - An open RAW format. Anyone with programming experience can implement this. If this starts ever getting traction (so far few camera manufacturers have taken it up) then I would recommend it to anyone who likes the ability to re-edit previous photos.
You dont want to save a jpg more than once, because the file looses quality each time it gets saved. And unless you save every possible print size combination as a jpg, you may have to refer to a cd/dvd later, which can get time consuming, compared to just accessing it off of the hard drive. And cd/dvd's have been known to fail.
This is both right and wrong. JPEG eliminates things that can't be seen as part of the compression (ok we're all photographers here I'm assuming you leave the quality slider all the way up). So what you end up with is an image with a bitrate the just covers the visible colour range in sRGB, and an image with lot of the black and blue data clobbered. The reason being is that our eyes are so insensitive to black and blue it makes no visible difference. The end result is that if you save a JPEG it would look no different from a TIFF... probably around the first 5 or so times.
But then comes the problem. A JPEG is divided into small squares which are then described by the compression algorithm. If you re-save the same JPEG over and over again at some point along the way many of the compression algorithms crap themselves. With photoshop this happens somewhere between the 5th and the 10th file where suddenly you end up with hideous squares all over the place.
So you lose nothing of value saving a JPEG, you don't lose anything of value editing that JPEG (talking minor edits, like cropping or adding a watermark) and re-saving. However repeat the process about 5-10 times and suddenly it will crack and your image will suck. I haven't done a test to see if a substantial edit to the image will cause it not to screw up. I just know it screws up if you re-save the same image, close it, load it, and save it again about 5-10 times.