Saving Size?

maulrat · Aug 3, 2008

Ok. So I finally had a chance to decently test out my first DSLR today and now I've come up with another problem: storage space. I am currently taking my photos in RAW and the gamut set to AdobeRGB. Now, I am stuck with about 30 decent photos all in RAW format sitting on my hard drive taking up space. I know that I will start running out of disk space fast. My question:

In what format and resolution is pretty decent to save my pictures as?

In RAW, each photo averages about 9.5 megs. When converted to TIF at 240 dpi and no resizing, they are about 29 megs each. I want to be able to call upon my photos again to print or edit. I keep hearing to save as a TIF first, then edit, then print, net, etc. If I decide to dump my RAWs after converting to TIF, what dpi should I save my TIFs in? What are some of your methods of storing photos? Of course, I will be backing the photos up on DVD when my storage folder reaches around 4 gigs. Thanks for your help and advice.

*Oh BTW, I'm a Photoshop junkie. All converting and editing is done in CS2 unless I find a better way.

tirediron · Aug 3, 2008

Memory's cheap. Buy more. Really, it is that simple. Shooting in RAW does eat up the memory, but it's worth it in the long run. I always shoot in RAW, do what processing I can to the RAW file in NikonCapture, and then save as a TIF for further work in CS3. Once I'm happy with that, I then save the resulting file as a .jpg. Since there are three of everything, a single image takes up a total of 60-70Mb of space.

I have a 5Gb partition on my HDD, that all of my images get copied to to work from, and I only use 4Gb cards. Since I typically process 1 out of 10 images (give or take a little) it usually works out fairly nicely that all of the RAW images fit on 1 DVD, and the resulting TIF and JPG images another. In addition to burning the DVDs, everything also gets saved to an external HDD which is solely for imagery.

So, all of that aside, NEVER, EVER delete the RAW file; that's the equivalent of destroying a film negative. if you're short of space, delete the JPG or TIF, but always keep the RAW. To gain a better understanding of DPI (which is in fact most often really PPI) try this article: http://www.tildefrugal.net/photo/dpi.php As a rule, I try and crop/save all of my images at 240 PPI or greater.

ksmattfish · Aug 3, 2008

I save as raw, do my raw processing adjustments, convert to tiff/psd for for further processing and sharpening, and save the finished photo as jpeg. I normally don't save the tiff/psd files unless there was complex editing done. It's easy enough to convert the raw file to tiff if I need to change the processing. I also often find that by the time I would be considering changing the processing my Photoshop skills have improved or I've learned new techniques, and I want to start over with the original raw file anyway.

Hard drives are pretty cheap these days. I like Western Digital, and they are about $0.20 a gigabyte at B & H.