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01-08-2013, 08:03 AM   #1
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Is it me or is it just wrong to...

delete your Raw/Dngs after they've been converted to a nice reasonably sized jpg?
I have a problem doing this just because I'm deleting them (feels downright dirty, like throwing away nice new clothes I only wore once!) but my God do those Raws take A LOT OF SPACE! Not that I lack space but believe I'd be ok with jpgs just like I was before I starting using Raws about 5 months ago.

Think I need to just get over it and make it happen.
Just need a nudge... or some nudging...
help and thanks in advance!

01-08-2013, 08:06 AM - 1 Like   #2
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I would keep my RAW files no matter what!!! - can't stress this enough!!!
Personally I would consider that as a very bad thing to do (deleting the RAW files that is).

Any-time later on you can go back to your RAW file and alter it as many times you want and get different effects.
A JPEG file ... you are stuck with it forever. Can't do much.

Invest in some external hard drives. These days they go for pretty affordable prices.
01-08-2013, 08:12 AM   #3
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In old school photography terms, for me RAW are equivalent to negatives, JPEGs processed photographs. Always keep the negs!
01-08-2013, 08:14 AM   #4
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Do not delete the RAW files................ever..............

Set up a solid archive process and save them (probably by year taken)..........

01-08-2013, 08:17 AM   #5
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QuoteOriginally posted by JohnX Quote
In old school photography terms, for me RAW are equivalent to negatives, JPEGs processed photographs. Always keep the negs!
+1. I am amazed at what I can do with some of the early RAW's I have now that I could not do then. I have been embarrassed looking at ones I did a year ago compared to what I can do now with the exact same file. There are consistent improvements in software and your processing skills will improve as well.

You do not have to keep them online if you don't want. Move them to an external drive (or two) and delete them from your working computer if you do not feel the need. But I would not get rid of them. That does not mean I keep everything, I cull pretty agressively to get rid of obvious junk and duplicates, but anything worth complete processing to jpeg is worth keeping in RAW.
01-08-2013, 08:26 AM   #6
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I think thats a question only you can answer lol If you dont want or need them, delete them, they take up a lot of space. If you think they maybe or could be needed at a later date then keep them. It is easy to think they have done there job already. Indeed that could be the case for many a folk
01-08-2013, 08:58 AM   #7
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You should keep any that may be used sometime in the future.External hard drive is a good answer but can be saved on cd or dvd.I do edit and delete all that aren't good enough to be used,sometimes a whole file folder.

01-08-2013, 08:58 AM   #8
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Space is an issue certainly. I have 9Tb of space in my NAS after Cyber Monday and the 2 3Tb drives I got for a song. I have one 2Tb that is 98% full and that is the Max for me as when you try to go above that, in my experience, you start to get a dramatic increase in errors. I wish there were a stable, physical storage platform that could be written to and stored that held enough not to be tedious. DVDs are so limited in space and take so long to write to that doing 3Tb of them is a daunting task without specialized equipment IMHO.
01-08-2013, 09:18 AM   #9
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storage is cheap.

There was a 16 Gig thumb drive for 9,99 at the Staples yesterday, and you can pick up 1TB Passport drive for $100, But you need a system to organize. Consider the space that a professional photographer shooting slide film would consume to store archives. We've got it pretty easy. Also, good archival process is probably a key requirement for a professional business.

I have a local photographer friend who treats his SD cards like film.. just buys a mitt full and leaves the images on the original card and indexes them...
01-08-2013, 09:29 AM   #10
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QuoteOriginally posted by mattt Quote
storage is cheap.

There was a 16 Gig thumb drive for 9,99 at the Staples yesterday, and you can pick up 1TB Passport drive for $100, But you need a system to organize. Consider the space that a professional photographer shooting slide film would consume to store archives. We've got it pretty easy. Also, good archival process is probably a key requirement for a professional business.

I have a local photographer friend who treats his SD cards like film.. just buys a mitt full and leaves the images on the original card and indexes them...
You might want to warn him that those cards need to be fired up once every 6 months or so... DVDs are another option, but my 32 GB cards just use too many DVDs. I'm probably buying a backup drive today, I have close to one gig of files to back up. I'd like them saved as TIFFs after I work on them, so 88MB per file. The space disappears quickly. As far as I know a TIFF is close to a RAW file, with the exception it lets you save your changes editing. You still need the DNGs somewhere however. Maybe 2 drives, one for DNGs one for TIFFs. I currently have a back up of Aperture files that I can't access. Just one of those things I'm going to have to sort out one of these days. ANyway, from now on DNGs and TIFFs, no proprietary formats.
01-08-2013, 09:31 AM   #11
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I will agree with what everyone has said, but I will add my take.

A bad photo is a bad photo, and I've taken some. The first thing I do is delete my "accidental" shots, shots of the floor, the ceiling, test shots to see if the lights are working, there's no reason to keep those.

I do keep a test shot of my color checker passport from every shoot, this allows me to maintain one or two CCPP profiles rather than hundreds, I just overwrite it every time I edit a new set or go back to an old set. Then I start to go through my shots.

I shoot mostly portraits, and I'll go through and check for critical focus on the eyes. If it's not there, the RAW finds it's way to the trash can. It's painful sometimes because I'll have an otherwise great shot, but the eyes are only "acceptably" sharp, which is to say, unacceptable. I have discovered a pretty cool program called Focus Magic that can sometimes save photos in which I've just missed the focus, but it does generate a lot of artifacts which have to be painstakingly removed. And believe me they show up in print much more readily than on the monitor.

This is where I set my baseline. All the photos at this point meet my minimum level of technical proficiency (i.e. they don't make it blatantly obvious that I'm a hack). Of the remaining photos, if I were to rate them on a scale of 1-5, basically the 4s and 5s get delivered to the client, the 3s only get delivered if I haven't shot enough 4s and 5s, for which I then severely berate myself, and the 1s and 2s never see the light of day again. So back to what I said at the beginning, a bad photo is a bad photo. If I never plan on doing anything with them again, I have no problem deleting the 1s and 2s, RAWs and JPEGs. The 3s I keep in RAW and occasionally re-edit just to see if they can be salvaged. The 4s and 5s? You bet I keep the RAWs and TIFFs and JPEGs, all my different treatments of the photo (B&W/color edits), and different croppings. Just get a hard drive for photos and when you fill it up, put it someplace safe, and install another.
01-08-2013, 09:37 AM   #12
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For sure, last time I thought we were in need of a new computer with more storage, we just sat down and deleted all the 1s and 2s, it saved me 200 MB, enough to make the drive efficient again. It took days. Painful but worth it. And it will be even more worth it when I back everything up. We always evaluate every picture though, and the most common reason for ditching a picture is we have a better picture of the same thing.
01-08-2013, 09:54 AM   #13
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Hard drives are getting cheap again. I got 2x 3Tb drives on CyberMonday for $70 each

I bought a 4 bay external USB 3.0 unit last year and had 2 open slots in it, which the 3Tb's filled. It works like a champ and is easy to initialize, turn on and off, and configure. Its not as sophisticated as a real NAS unit but it cost $100 and has worked flawlessly too. I also invested in a hard drive duplicator last year when I had the main HD in my desktop start to go wanky on me. Its another thing that costs little (<$50) but can save you days of time and lots of headaches. If your pictures are your livelihood or they are irreplaceable then making a backup hard drive and storing it is worth the $75-150 for the 2nd drive IMHO.

The Aluratek is a really nice unit because it will duplicate with the press of 1 button and it will act as an external hard drive with two 3.5 or 2.5 drives installed vertically.

Probox -
Amazon.com: Mediasonic HF2-SU3S2 ProBox 4 Bay Hard Drive Enclosure with USB 3.0 & eSATA: Computers & Accessories

Duplicator -
Amazon.com: Aluratek External SATA Portable External Hard Drive Duplicator AHDDUB100: Electronics
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Last edited by Docrwm; 01-08-2013 at 10:32 AM.
01-08-2013, 12:59 PM   #14
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It's wrong. We should all keep things we don't need.

I agree with maxfield_photo, although I still find it a challenge to carry out in practice. But at least FastPictureViewer has helped me efficiently cull my photos. And shooting sports (running) recently has been nice, because I can justify shooting only JPEGs. It also relieves me of the pressure to do PP (I only do it on about 1-2% of the shots), and the fact that I took JPEGs (even 1 star JPEG quality in many cases, which is still surprisingly good) helps relieve me of the crazy idea that I have a hidden "masterpiece" in there.

Last edited by DSims; 01-08-2013 at 01:07 PM.
01-08-2013, 03:21 PM   #15
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okay, OKAY!!! ;)

The decision to or not to was kind of a toss up for me. My pics are primarily of my two kids and wife and occasional meets with extended family and friends.

I acquired a k30 a month ago. I've got a bitchen set of lenses.
I've never taken better pictures. I've got sufficient space and backup.

Thanks for the feedback gentlemen.
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