Raw files, keep or delete?

[b_twill]

Been going back and forth with this and just wondering what others do. Typically I will shoot in raw, do any touch up, save the picture as a jpeg and then delete the original raw file. Been thinking lately that maybe I should keep the raw files in case I ever what to do something different sometime down the road. Then I think hopefully in the future I'll have better pictures to play with and these will be delegated to the "OMG I can't believe I thought that picture was good!" file.

 

[WayneF]

That is blasphemy to me. In the film days, did you also discard all your negatives too?

You can buy a 2TB external disk drive for hardly more than $100. Stores a lot of Raw files.

 

[480sparky]

The only raw files I toss out are the ones that cannot be saved. OOF, missed flash synch, etc.

A few years ago, I went to a class reunion. Ran into a classmate that I had photographed his wedding about 25 years ago. He told me they lost everything in a house fire about 5 years later. I still had every negative from his wedding, but I didn't tell him I did.

Three weeks after the reunion, he got an album of each image I took at their wedding. He thought they were gone forever.


Where would they be if I had decided keeping their negatives wasn't worth a tiny bit of storage space? Same principle applies to raw files.

 

[Raj_55555]

Been going back and forth with this and just wondering what others do. Typically I will shoot in raw, do any touch up, save the picture as a jpeg and then delete the original raw file. Been thinking lately that maybe I should keep the raw files in case I ever what to do something different sometime down the road. Then I think hopefully in the future I'll have better pictures to play with and these will be delegated to the "OMG I can't believe I thought that picture was good!" file.

I agree with WayneF.

Think of it this way, one day you find that you've learned a new PP trick which would work wonders with "that special image", and you're frantically looking for that RAW file only to realize that you've deleted it. Granted you'll have the previously edited JPEG with you, but editing an edited jpeg? We all know how that turns out.
I used to do exactly the same, but I learned the lesson with time. One of my fav shots got selected for an exhibition at a very famous art museum, and I did a crappy PP in that due to my limited knowledge back then. I can't tell you how sorry I was to have deleted that RAW file. I had to spend a lot of time editing that old JPEG.

Memory is cheap these days, so is the internet. If nothing you may try uploading the RAW files to google drive or a similar place.

 

[Trever1t]

I ONLY delete missed shots. Never delete RAWS. Your intuition is correct. I will go back and delete my jpgs if I need to but never the raws.

 

[480sparky]

I will give up my RAWs when they pry them from my cold, dead hands!

 

[nicholaskong]

I keep all my RAWs. Storage nowadays are not expensive. We might need to use the RAW files in future. No one knows.

 

[RonaRight]

I know that RAW is the negative of digital photography and you would never want to throw away your negatives and I used to think the same way as all the comments above. However, over the past few years I have begun to change my ways. Maybe some people don't mind running server farms in their homes, but that's not what interests me. sure storage is cheap and only getting cheaper, but there's a limit to how much I want to deal with. I'm not saying I throw all my RAW files away, heavens no, that would be criminal. All I've started to do is filter out those images that I know without a doubt in my mind that I will never print. I then convert them to JPG, yes I said it, a lossy format, and hell, maybe even reduce the resolution. Not every picture I take is worthy of printing and many can be deleted outright, frankly cuz I just don't like them.

My point is I will always keep the RAW files of any image I rate 4 or 5 stars and my HDR images. However, those images that are really just for fun and good memories, I have no issues ditching the RAW files since it has way more info than I'll ever need for screen use.

 

[480sparky]

....... All I've started to do is filter out those images that I know without a doubt in my mind that I will never print............

Let me know when you're done with your crystal ball. I wanna use it.

 

[JClishe]

I delete every jpg as soon as its been delivered, printed, whatever. Raw's I keep forever, jpg's I delete.

 

[WayneF]

I delete every jpg as soon as its been delivered, printed, whatever. Raw's I keep forever, jpg's I delete.

That is my philosophy too. The JPG is the temporary file, for the specific purpose, and then throw away.

If I need another JPG, it again comes from the Raw file master copy.

 

[b_twill]

Thanks for the replies! Guess I was thinking correctly (that's probably a first if you asked my wife! ) I'll start saving those RAW files