File management - RAW, tiff, & JPEGS (oh my)

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.

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.
 
i keep all my RAW files in my import directory, then i have the psd with my edits in my finalfullsize directory along with the saved jpg, then my resized dir has a jpg only which i use for uploading to sites like smugmug then my signed directory has my signature which i use for uploading to forums and that sort. why keep so many copies? why not. storage is cheap. so keep them all and back them up twice if you want. as long as you have a organized file structure and you know you're own structure setup, they are easy to sort through and find what you're looking for.

additionally.... why do people resize to print? you get higher quality prints if you let the printer scale the image rather than resizing pre-print.
 
OP here.

My original question was not so much whether to save all different formats, but how to organize the files. A few early responses addressed this, but I'd still like to see more examples of how someone who keeps all versions organizes them.

Also, do any of you incorporate the format into the file name? Maybe something like this:

2009/7-29-09/666_Stripper_HR.jpg (hi rez)

2009/7-29-09/666_Stripper_LR.jpg (lo rez)

2009/7-29-09/666_Stripper_4x6.jpg

2009/7-29-09/666_Stripper_8x10.jpg

2009/7-29-09/666_Stripper_Sepia.jpg

Jon
 
666_Stripper
What kind of photos are you taking? :shock:

Also, do any of you incorporate the format into the file name? Maybe something like this:
To an extent, yes.
When I save a low rez jpeg for web, I'll usually add 'web' into the file name. When I save them for full size print files, I'll probably leave the file name/number intact, or I might rename the lot of them, to something that will mean something to someone else. 'Jackandjill-001.jpg' for example.
I used to save different print sizes, so that there was no confusion when sending them to get printed, and in that case, I'd put the print size in the file name. However, my lab uses ROES, which crops the images as you order them, very easy.
 
I don't keep any of my JPEGs. I have the original RAWs (DNGs), or TIFFs if I edited them in Photoshop, all catalogued in Lightroom. If I really need to create another version that's cropped differently, I'll create a virtual copy in LR and go from there. Outputting a JPEG is such a trivial matter (and watermarking is equally trivial with Mogrify) that I don't think it's worth the trouble of saving all those different JPEGs.
 
Which secretly means he was shooting here. :lmao: (Note, may not be safe for work.)
 
are you gaining anything in quality by converting RAWs to TIFFs then to HighQ JPGs and then printing them vs RAWs to highQ JPGs and print?
Sounds like a extra step to me too.

There are images I have invested a fair amount of editing into that get saved as .psd files before conversion to JPEG HQ.
 
Here's how I do it:

Say I took a shoot of little Joe Jones and his mother, Jane, is the one who made the app't. And maybe a few months later she called me back to take either more photos of Joe or some family shots. And say they live in Suburbia, Any State (AS). Here's how it'd look (on a drive just for client files):

E:/Jones, Jane - Suburbia, AS/
^main client folder

E:/Jones, Jane - Suburbia, AS/Joe 1-04-2009/
^All RAW images from the camera from that session go here

E:/Jones, Jane - Suburbia, AS/Joe 1-04-2009/Edited/
^After I've picked out the best ones and edited them, they go here (as PSDs)

E:/Jones, Jane - Suburbia, AS/Joe 1-04-2009/Edited/Low-Res/
^Any files converted to sRGB and then saved as low-resolution JPEGs for the family to use online (Facebook, e-mail, etc.) as purchased go here

E;/Jones, Jane - Suburbia, AS/Family 3-15-2009/
^The same client's second session's RAW files go here

... and the same thing happens with Edited/Low-Res and all.
 
Just a quickie. I currently use Aperture to manage my library. Its saved on a Raid array and backed up all the time with a hot swap drive

if I was to edit in photoshop with layers, would aperture save the PSD into its library? or would it be able to handle a layered tif file?

Never thought about how I would handle photoshop layers with aperture before!!
 

Most reactions

Back
Top