RAW Question

[bluetibby1]

Hey TPF,
What do y'all do (yes I'm from TX) with all of the RAW files that y'all have already converted to JPEG? Keep them or send them to the recycling bin? I just dont know what I need to do with them! Please help. Thanks in advance.
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[oDDball]

Mine just collect in huge amounts and take up space because I am a horrbile pack rat.

 

[bluetibby1]

HAHA, as of right now that's what mine are doing. I'm afriad of deleting any and then regretting it later....
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[Josh66]

I keep them on the hard drive until space becomes an issue, then I burn DVDs and delete them. I know I should be putting them on an external drive or something though... A DVD is better than nothing I guess.

 

[table1349]

Hey TPF,
What do y'all do (yes I'm from TX) with all of the RAW files that y'all have already converted to JPEG? Keep them or send them to the recycling bin? I just dont know what I need to do with them! Please help. Thanks in advance.
blue

What did you used to do with your film negatives after Walmart sent you prints in the old days.

Raw files are your negatives. Me, I never get rid of a negative, film or digital. I only convert the raw files I plan to print and only keep the converted file until I no longer need it. I can always re-create the picture from the Raw file.

 

[bluetibby1]

Hey TPF,
What do y'all do (yes I'm from TX) with all of the RAW files that y'all have already converted to JPEG? Keep them or send them to the recycling bin? I just dont know what I need to do with them! Please help. Thanks in advance.
blue

What did you used to do with your film negatives after Walmart sent you prints in the old days.

Raw files are your negatives. Me, I never get rid of a negative, film or digital. I only convert the raw files I plan to print and only keep the converted file until I no longer need it. I can always re-create the picture from the Raw file.

Well considering I'm only 24, I never really used negitives from 35mm....I'm SUPER new to photography.

 

[table1349]

Hey TPF,
What do y'all do (yes I'm from TX) with all of the RAW files that y'all have already converted to JPEG? Keep them or send them to the recycling bin? I just dont know what I need to do with them! Please help. Thanks in advance.
blue

What did you used to do with your film negatives after Walmart sent you prints in the old days.

Raw files are your negatives. Me, I never get rid of a negative, film or digital. I only convert the raw files I plan to print and only keep the converted file until I no longer need it. I can always re-create the picture from the Raw file.

Well considering I'm only 24, I never really used negitives from 35mm....I'm SUPER new to photography.

Ok, what did you mom and dad do with their negatives?

 

[oDDball]

I think mine put them up in a shoe box, never to be seen again. Film was so long ago... :lmao:

 

[ann]

Storage these days is cheap. Keep them as you may wish to go back and make changes as your abilities increase with PP.

 

[Boomn4x4]

I shoot 100% in RAW, I'd say 98% of them I process in a batch job with preset processing and then deleted. The only time I ever keep a RAW image is if it is something that I process heavily and I think I may want to change it again.

What did you used to do with your film negatives after Walmart sent you prints in the old days.

Raw files are your negatives. Me, I never get rid of a negative, film or digital.

I really dont understand this... :idea: We kept film negatives so that we could reprint it if needed, you can't (reasonably) make a reprint from a print. The negative was the only option. With digital, all you need to do is right click, copy, paste. Once you process the RAW file, the RAW file only has value if you need to reprocess it.

 

[IgsEMT]

Once the job is done (processed, delivered, printed, albums, etc) contract obligations were completed, I only safe the final product and gets deleted.
With film, I keep the negatives at least for 7 years and then offer clients to buy them or discard it or keep it (a lot of variables at play here).
When I went digital I kept all the original RAWs, JPGS, TIFFs (w/e) cause like everything was saying I'd go back and reprocess something. I rarely if ever go back - no time and no need.

 

[table1349]

Why would you right click, copy and paste. You printing a word document as photos? My printing method is file, print.

The raw file contains 100% of the data it contained when first created. Raw files are not altered in post processing. Other formats that save space do so by dumping what the algorithm determines is not needed data. Once it is gone, you can never get that data back. Me, I want 100% of the data in my stored copy.

 

[Boomn4x4]

Why would you right click, copy and paste. You printing word dociment as photos. My printing method is file, print.

The raw file contains 100% of the data it contained when first created. Raw files are not altered in post processing. Other formats that save space do so by dumping what the algorithm determines is not needed data. Once it is gone, you can never get that data back. Me, I want 100% of the data in my stored copy.

If you right click the file, click copy, then click paste, it creates a duplicate copy of the file. If you open the file, and click print, it will print an exact copy of the the photo as you printed it last time, no need to open the RAW. In fact, you CAN'T reprint a RAW file, you have to reprocess it.

Once the data is gone, why would you need it back? You've already processed the image into what you want it to look like, the data that you've gotten rid of isn't needed anymore, so why keep it? I mean it makes sense to me to keep that for an image that is heavily processed and you aren't quite sure if you like it or not and think you may want to go back to it... but out of the tens, even hundreds of thousands of photos you take, how many of them do you actually go back to?

Do you keep every processed image and every raw image? Either way, it just sounds like a waste of time and space. Its like cutting coupons out of a news paper and then saving the news paper in case you need the scraps back.