Do you ever get rid of your RAW images?

[Skelrad]

I'm just curious how many people save their RAW images for all eternity, and how many folks get rid of them once they've done all the post processing they want to do and have saved off the new image. Since the file has to be converted to really be viewable by anyone or to print with your processing changes, is there a point to saving the RAW image? Yes, storage is relatively cheap, but let's face it, when you have a RAW file plus at least one processed shot for every photo, that starts to eat up disk space pretty quickly!

I'm assuming the vast majority of people save the RAW files. What's the rationale? How many of you have actually gone back to that RAW image 5 years down the road to re-edit it?

Just curious. I'm building a new PC and trying to decide on storage space.

 

[SCraig]

I never delete or edit original files from my camera. I edit copies of the files, never the originals. Yes, I have gone back several years later and re-edited images.

 

[Robin Usagani]

I delete my RAWs. Yeah.. storage is cheap.. blah blah blah. The fact is, I will never have the time to reedit it.


For client's photos, I keep the RAWs about a year and I delete them. I only back up the high res jpegs.

 

[BobaPhil]

I do go through mine and delete stuff...If it's something I think I'll be using, I'll keep it, but a lot gets trashed. I need to edit more in my computer, it's got a LOT more memory, the laptop is running out, lol.

 

[Overread]

My process is as follows:

1) Don't delete in-camera. Barring the clearly totally bad photos (eg totally underexposed) you can't easily tell things from the tiny LCD screen; plus I'd rather not have my head down sorting images on the tiny screen and instead have it up taking photos. I'd only seriously delete in-camera if you ran out of card-space and had to.

2) Don't delete the first time you review the photos. Again barring very clear bad shots I tend to avoid deletion at this early stage; its often the time when one is most critical of photos and being too critical can be a bad thing as you might dump photos which, upon review show that they were actually pretty good shots.

3) Sort through and delete only the RAWs that are so bad they are not worth keeping - even for memorys sake.

4) I keep hold of RAWs of all photos that remain from this process.

5) I keep hold of PSD copies of edited photos since its easier to come back and adjust them than starting afresh each time.

If I were shooting a greater and more regular volume of photos I'd likely start to shift toward keeping RAWs of the best photos and those I like the most whilst dumping those "so-so" ones.

 

[480sparky]

Unless the original image is so OOF, or exposure is way off, I never delete an image. Even if I never edit them, I keep every raw file I've created.

If you get the right editor, you don't need to maintain two images (original and edited). A non-destructive editor will keep the original data as it was recorded by the camera.

The reason I keep all my files is I sell more of what I don't edit. If I had the habit of deleting what I don't like & edit and dumping the rest, I'd cut my sales by 75%.

 

[PaulWog]

I only do photography recreationally. I still don't quite have a perfect method of organizing and storing my photographs, but I'm trying to get things sorted out.

I keep a RAW photo file system, and I try to file things by date chunks. Then, once I've processed a photo and finalized it in JPEG format, I either dump the JPEG in a finalized file, or I categorize it into a file such as "Family photos". The RAW remains where I put it in the first place.

If the jpeg edit is something I'm happy with, I often will delete the RAW file (or files for that day) depending on whether I feel like the RAW files are worth keeping for future edits.

 

[table1349]

I keep it all. I have a file cabinet full of negatives. I have every digital photo I ever took. It's amazing how many times people think that they are done with something and then discard it.

For the in-laws 50th wedding anneversery my wife and I went to the photographer that shot their wedding and asked if he still had the negatives. He did. We wanted to get copies of some of the photos for the folks. Theirs got destroyed in one of their many moves during a 32 year Air Force career. He had the negatives but refused to make us prints. Instead he gave us all of the negatives from thier wedding so we could print out what we wanted at a better price than he would have charged.

When the folks saw the large photo frame with a photo of each of the families with two of their wedding photos in the center, they both cried. They thoght those photos were long lost. We gave them the negatives and they have reprinted everything they lost.

I never understood the idea of capturing memories only to throw them away when we get tired of them.

 

[Steve5D]

I keep everything...

 

[dxqcanada]

I still have binders with all my negatives I've shot over the past 25 years sitting my closet.

 

[Robin Usagani]

Having only high res. jpeg is way better than not having the negatives. 100 years from now I can still print something with my high res. jpeg. You simply can't compare it to not having negatives.

 

[DSRay]

I save every exposure as a DNG file. I upload to my working hard drive and then they are automatically backed up to my 2TB NAS which runs RAID. I try to transfer from the NAS to CDs every month.

And yes I often go back, I just finished working on a couple exposures from 2007.

 

[D-B-J]

My process is as follows:

1) Don't delete in-camera. Barring the clearly totally bad photos (eg totally underexposed) you can't easily tell things from the tiny LCD screen; plus I'd rather not have my head down sorting images on the tiny screen and instead have it up taking photos. I'd only seriously delete in-camera if you ran out of card-space and had to.

2) Don't delete the first time you review the photos. Again barring very clear bad shots I tend to avoid deletion at this early stage; its often the time when one is most critical of photos and being too critical can be a bad thing as you might dump photos which, upon review show that they were actually pretty good shots.

3) Sort through and delete only the RAWs that are so bad they are not worth keeping - even for memorys sake.

4) I keep hold of RAWs of all photos that remain from this process.

5) I keep hold of PSD copies of edited photos since its easier to come back and adjust them than starting afresh each time.

If I were shooting a greater and more regular volume of photos I'd likely start to shift toward keeping RAWs of the best photos and those I like the most whilst dumping those "so-so" ones.

I do almost the exact same. I keep the best and a few extra, and then delete the rest. I rarely go back and re-edit.

Jake

 

[manaheim]

I trash a large percentage of my raws that are redundant or poor. At 50megs a piece, keeping them around is a nightmare.

I NEVER throw away RAWs for images I keep.

 

[rexbobcat]

I keep most of my raws except for the obviously bad ones.

But it has taken me almost a year to fill up 1TB, so I'm not really burning through storage.