What's the best file format to save pictures in?

[Briodan]

Originally Posted by Stercus Vultus

A bold statement. Are you ready to put money on that, Briodan?

Pretty much, yes, for the next 50 or 60 years RAW files are actually very simple to work with and there will always be someone that will be able to write a software program to convert a RAW (NEF... whatever flavor) into the file format that will work with your software. And software manufacturers are going to maintain backwards compatability... it is in their best interest.

Originally Posted by Stercus Vultus

Test it IRL on your own TIFFs. And learn to trust your own, real test results over some forum stalker's loud prophecies of doom.

I would hope that I did not come across as a "forum stalker's loud prophecies of doom." My point is that the raw file that you get from the camera should be your master and that if you rely on a post processed image saved as a TIFF an compressed, there is more risk in that than just archiving the original RAW which is smaller than TIFFs... then you ALWAYS have your original image to work with if you need to... Of course if you are using software that is not like Lightroom you may have to save intermediate files if you like the PP done to that point. Then you may opt for the compressed TIFFs, but if something happened to the TIFF, you would still have the RAW saved off somewhere.

[swampler]

If you've finished the processing, you might as well just save as jpeg. You'll still have your RAW file if you need/want to re-process.

[Douglas]

Or tiff.

You can get terrabyte drives really cheap. I remember when Terrabyte drives were like super high tech and decades away for us regular folks. And that was only 8 or 9 years ago when I was happy with my 6.8gb hard drive.

[swampler]

Originally Posted by Douglas

I remember when Terrabyte drives were like super high tech and decades away for us regular folks. And that was only 8 or 9 years ago when I was happy with my 6.8gb hard drive.

I remember using a disk compressor to try to get 40MB out of my 20MB drive at work. Still no need to waste space.

[Douglas]

I tried that. But after I compressed the disk, it no longer fit in the drive. It also didnt spin well when it looked like /\/\/\/\/\

Remember those drives that took like fat floppy discs... I cant remember what they were called. But they were the smaller version of Jazz drives. The discs were like $5 a pop and held like 10mb. Then dvd drives came out and you could do 700mb on a 20 cent disc.

[Stercus Vultus]

Originally Posted by Douglas

You can get terrabyte drives really cheap.

Terabyte! Only one 'R'!

1 terabyte (TB) = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes = 1,000 Gigabytes = 1,000,000 (1 million) Megabytes.
It's got nothing to do with the Latin word 'Terra', which means 'Earth'.

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terabyte, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra.

[craftysnapper]

Originally Posted by Stercus Vultus

I think chances are that well-established, standardized TIFF files can still be read and edited in 10 years time, felix. While I'm not 1/100th as sure about all them different RAW flavors, versions, and derivatives. And I don't like to gamble with those images, and I am allergic to lock-in.

But I keep the RAWs too... I can afford to run the risk as I have the TIFFs!

Well as Adobe own the Tiff format as well as the DNG raw format I'm guessing that in the unliky event Adobe ever went belly up both formats might dissapear.

[Stercus Vultus]

Originally Posted by craftysnapper

in the unliky event Adobe ever went belly up both formats might dissapear.

If "Adobe ever went belly up" that would be a guarantee that DNG disappears first, and fast!, because it is a lock-in format, dependent on Adobe software (not supported after a belly-up!) to be able to handle it, whereas TIFF is universal, thus not dependent on any one particular software-maker.

[Ellbee99]

I always saved as tiff. My lab said that they did a test for over 2 years opening jpeg files. They opened these files and saved them for that amount of time and found NO deterioration in the jpeg files.

I now save the raw files SOOC on a disc, but also save and work on jpeg files. They are smaller and more compact. As long as you save them as the highest quality, I have no problems.

I have been dealing with this lab for 8+ years and I trust them. What they say in this instance I have tried and it seems to be true for me as well.

Hope this helps.

[Stercus Vultus]

Originally Posted by Douglas

Then dvd drives came out and you could do 700mb on a 20 cent disc.

CDs hold 700MB.
Single layer DVDs hold 4,7GB

[cadmium]

Originally Posted by Ellbee99

I always saved as tiff. My lab said that they did a test for over 2 years opening jpeg files. They opened these files and saved them for that amount of time and found NO deterioration in the jpeg files.

There's always some deterioration. However I was curious how much exactly so I wrote a quick little program to try it out (I'm a .net developer by trade). It takes a source image and opens it and re-saves over a few hundred times.

I was actually quite surprised by the results. The first Image I did survived fairly well, even up to 600 times. There was noticeable color bleeding and loss of detail, but it wasn't *that* bad.

Next, I ran a picture that featured a deep, saturated blue sky and it went to hell within 10 saves, even on 100% quality. I think the difference is that jpeg compression is harsher on blues (we apparently notice blue noise less than green or red). Just a guess though. It was also a smaller images, which might have contributed.

Most images came through a few saves well enough. I personally wouldn't archive images in jpeg, if given the choice (especially with dirt cheap hard drives), but if you absolutely had to, it can be done... to a point.

If I had more time, I'd post my comparison pics, but I'm in the middle of a big project.

Originally Posted by Stercus Vultus

JPG and PNG are 'lossy' formats.

I didn't see this corrected, but PNG is not a 'lossy' format. PNG-8 is indexed to 8bit color and PNG-24 is indexed at 24bit color, but their compression schemes are non-destructive.

[craftysnapper]

Originally Posted by Stercus Vultus

If "Adobe ever went belly up" that would be a guarantee that DNG disappears first, and fast!, because it is a lock-in format, dependent on Adobe software (not supported after a belly-up!) to be able to handle it, whereas TIFF is universal, thus not dependent on any one particular software-maker.

In that case when it did what would stop you from pressing output to Tiff in Lightroom and problem solved.

No file format or storage is future proof or free from the possibility of change and as photographers we have to deal with it, eventually things like standard DVD will become obsolete just like floppy disc's and we will just migrate them to a new standard or file format before the means to dissapears..its really no big deal that a file format might go out of favour . And I can think of a quite a few camera own raw formats that are no longer supported and DNG or Tiff conversion would have been good photographic house keeping .

As to the resaving argument of jpegs lets get it into perspective ,yes its lossy but for it to be it has to be reopened and worked on again before there is a loss. Now if you belive that continual reopening and reworking of a Tiff is none destructive then you are mistaken, any continual and repeated pixel pushing of the original TIFF image/file is degrading it . Only raw file editing is none destructive to the original image.

[pommie]

Quick question,
why don't you save the program you are using to convert the raw file in the same storage area as the backups ?
Then it does not matter if the image file type you use stops being supported, you have the means to convert them as long as you have the image files.


Cheers David

[felix.reichardt]

Originally Posted by pommie

Quick question,
why don't you save the program you are using to convert the raw file in the same storage area as the backups ?
Then it does not matter if the image file type you use stops being supported, you have the means to convert them as long as you have the image files.


Cheers David

That does not really work ... unless you preserve the converting program. the OS, the hardware and some spareparts you might not get anymore in future. Not all software runs on any hardware and/or OS.

[pommie]

Well if anyone is that worried store a computer, complete with o/s and software

Cheers David

[felix.reichardt]

Originally Posted by Stercus Vultus

If "Adobe ever went belly up" that would be a guarantee that DNG disappears first, and fast!, because it is a lock-in format, dependent on Adobe software (not supported after a belly-up!) to be able to handle it, whereas TIFF is universal, thus not dependent on any one particular software-maker.

if Adobe ever went belly up ... than I would still have their software on my PC and enough time to convert ... get real.

[Douglas]

After reading this thread, I have come to a conclusion.

What's the best file format to save pictures in?

Whichever one you want. They are all viable. You want tiff? great! Jpg? Swell! Raw? Good for you! Any one or all 3? Awesome!

[KmH]

Originally Posted by Douglas

After reading this thread, I have come to a conclusion.

What's the best file format to save pictures in?

Whichever one you want. They are all viable. You want tiff? great! Jpg? Swell! Raw? Good for you! Any one or all 3? Awesome!

Pretty much the final result of any thread that starts, "WHAT IS THE BEST.......?"

[kidnanrud]

Well, I go about this rather differently. First I take all my photos in raw. When I import them I use FastStone (free software and one of the best in my opinion) to rename the files to the date taken and sequence number. I then go to a directory where I have my "Saved Originals" folder and create a new folder under this with the reason or place I took the pictures and save the original renamed raw files here. I then create a duplicate "working: file. The next step is to use FastStone's comparison utility to compare similar shots and eliminate bad shots by deleting them from the working file. Now I go to Photoshop and batch convert the remaining working files to .tiff as I am going to modify these shots and may resave them a number of times so I want to go lossless. After working a file I will resave it in an appropriately named folder as a .tiff file and may also save, in this file a .jpeg if I am going to print it or post it for friends and relatives. Then periodically I will back up these files both to a separate hard drive and to an internet backup site. Obviously, I am not concerned about file size as storage is dirt cheap.
Comments and criticism with this approach are welcome.
Thanks,
kidnanrud

[Ben_V]

Firstly I keep all RAWs. I use Lightroom which works with the internal catalogue files and leaves the original RAWs untouched.

Any file that needs further post-processing is converted to PSD from within Lightroom and then taken through Photoshop. Final output is a 48-bit TIFF. TIFFs have been around for the last three decades and they will be with us at least as long.

TIFFs do not need to be so big, as you can use several flavours of losless compression on them (LZW, RLE or ZIP). There are plenty apps out there on all systems, that can read/write TIFFs, so it really is very universal.

I generate additional JPGs only to giove files to customers or to send them for printing. I don't store them longer than necessary.

Ben