[Marc Sabatella]

I know I said I'd bow out, but some of what has been posted is, in my opinion, dangerously wrong, arguments made for the sake of arguing rather than for the sake of passing on useful information.

Frankly, I'm glad you're not bowing out, because I'd just as soon get to the bottom of what appears to be a misunderstanding rather than just be annoyed with each other. I do respect your expertise and opinions greatly.

The OP asked how best to save files that he was done post processing on, either jpeg or tiff?
This implies he is doing more than the very limited processing that is available in Lightroom.

It doesn't imply that to me at all. But if that's your assumption, then indeed, you are absolutely correct, and I'm in full agreement with you. Actually, he didn't even say what program he was using - could be PPL for all we know. Nor did he specifically say he was shooting RAW.

So let's say this:

*IF* one is doing all one's processing in the domain of "parametric image editing" - using RAW processing programs like using LR, ACR, Aperture, ACDSee Pro, or any other program that automatically saves the settings you use but doesn't alter the image data - then it is not necessary to archive any conversion at all. Not harmful, and perhaps useful in some ways, but not necessary.

*IF* one is doing traditional processing that needs to be saved as a totally new bitmap - eg, Photoshop, most other programs that operate on JPEG or TIFF files - then indeed, you need to save as JPEG, TIFF, or the program's native format (eg, PSD), and the question of *which* format to use becomes relevant.

You are assuming the latter case only, I'm considering the possibility of the former, and my recommendations are based on that.

Lightroom is a great cataloging program, but it is not a great post processing program. It's just too lightweight.

For your purposes. Others find they can do almost all of what they need using LR or similar applications. Regardless of how well these applications would serve *your* needs, one cannot deny that there a *lot* of photographers that find them sufficient most of the time.

Terms like "non destructive" and "bit oriented", while very colorful descriptives, are less than useful when it comes to what is a safe format to save post processed files, and are the exact opposite of useful when it comes to describing post processing software to someone who may not see through the hype.

My intent was not to promote hype, but the make a distinction between the two very different types of software using what seem to be the most commonly recognized terms. Above, I've switched to using the term "parametric image editing" (PIE), which is the term Peter Krogh uses in the current edition of The DAM Book. If you've got better terms, I'm happy to use them for the sake of this discussion. But one way or another, you've got to make the distinction, because the answer to the question posed is totally dependent on which type of software you are using.

As for PSD being the no brainer if one is a Photoshop user, I know several photographers who use Photoshop but save as TIFFs for reasons program compatibility.

Makes sense. Not being a Photoshop user, I don't know what limitations using TIFF as opposed to PSD might entail, if any. So I accept that you are right about this. PSD or TIFF, then - and indeed, maybe a preference for TIFF if you're concerned about the future of Adobe.

This thread got derailed as soon as Lightroom got mentioned, and a few people, including a moderator, jumped off the train and pushed it farther off the tracks in the name of scoring dumb points.

Please believe me when I say that was *not* my intent. I quite honestly believe it is very possible the OP is talking about doing RAW processing only using "PIE"-ware, because that *is* a very common scenario. And if that is the case here, then I think my comments are perfectly valid and appropriate - *if* one is using PIE-ware (as very many people do), then it is *not* necessary to archive anything else. I stand by that statement, and I suspect most people who use PIE-ware primarily would agree with it. I am not trying to score dumb points, I am trying to give the OP the best possible advice if he is using PIE-ware. If it wasn't clear form the context of my original remarks that I was referring to the PIE-ware case only, then I apologize for not being explicit about that.

The question wasn't what software, the question was what format

Yes, but you cannot answer the question of format without knowing the software, because with some software, one format might be most logical, and with other software, another format might be most logical. If one is using PIE-ware, then I do believe the best answer is, no conversion is necessary. Might be useful if one is concerned about future access to one's PIE-ware of choice (see comments below), but this is in some ways a separate issue that can potentially be dealt with separately.

If you want to save a conversion as well just in case you are unable to access your software in the future, that's not a bad idea. With PIE-ware, processing is pretty easy to duplicate again if necessary, so a simple snapshot of the converted image (a medium resolution JPEG, say) may suffice as a guide. Depends on how often you'd expect to need to go back to archived images after you lose access to your PIE-ware and reproduce your processing. Some recommend saving as DNG with an adjusted preview embedded within the image, I believe LR does this by default, or can easily be configured to do so automatically. But another thing to consider is that you're unlikely to be have your PIE-ware software of choice taken from you without warning. You can reaosnably expect to still have access to your software while making the choice to make a change. And one could wait until that point in time to actually generate conversions. Depending on how far in the future this is, or what the software landscape looks like by then, you may or may not feel the need to generate conversions of everything you have archived.

If you want to save your files in the safest form possible, then you want to stick with a robust format that is not dependent on the goodwill of one or two vendors to be readable.

Again, that is indeed a good point, one that *is* worth considering if you use PIE-ware. If you don't make a conversion, your work is lost if you lose access to that program. If this is a big concern, then a conversion is indeed useful. But as described above, it needn't necessarily be something you need to deal with right now. Which is to say, it needn't trump other archiving concerns, such as the desire to archive in a form that provides you the sort of fully reversible access to your processing that is presumably part of why you are using PIE-ware in the first place.

Again, bottom line: with PIE-ware (aka non-destructive processing programs, like LR, ACR, Aperture, ACDSee Pro, etc), the issues for archiving are different than they are for applications like Photoshop that work by modifying the image data itself. It's an important distinction to understand as you consider your archiving strategy.

[rm2]

*IF* one is doing all one's processing in the domain of "parametric image editing" - using RAW processing programs like using LR, ACR, Aperture, ACDSee Pro, or any other program that automatically saves the settings you use but doesn't alter the image data - then it is not necessary to archive any conversion at all. Not harmful, and perhaps useful in some ways, but not necessary.

What happens when the computer gets upgraded? Or if the user decides to switch operating systems? Or even if he decides to start using a different program for his photography needs. Relying on those program specific saved settings seems to be very unwise in my opinion.

I prefer to save the RAW files for sure. There have been several times when I go back to a photo to try out a new RAW editor and see if I can improve the results. I also like to keep the final image, and I personally choose to keep the JPEG files because they are nice and small. But, that is because I rarely go back to may images for reprocess. If I wanted to keep an already processed image for possible (not very likely) further processing I think I would chose to save it in PNG. But, that is just me, and what do I know?

[Rick]

This thread got derailed as soon as Lightroom got mentioned, and a few people, including a moderator, jumped off the train and pushed it farther off the tracks in the name of scoring dumb points.
I though moderators were supposed to moderate, not push their own agendas.
The question wasn't what software, the question was what format, so while the trolls argue the finer points of programs, lets take this back on topic.

I'm not sure why anyone who doesn't agree with you is either a troll or pushing their own agenda - any more than you might be pushing your own agenda - but whatever. I don't think that adds to the discussion, however.

If you want to save your files in the safest form possible, then you want to stick with a robust format that is not dependent on the goodwill of one or two vendors to be readable.
This lets out pretty much all of the proprietary formats, be they PEF, PSD or even DNG, which, while technically not a proprietary format would probably not be supported in the absence of Adobe..
It also lets out jpeg, since they are quite easily corrupted.
What you want to look for are formats that can be decoded easily and are not vendor dependent.
Tiff's are safe, bitmaps are safer.
PSDs are probably safe, though if Adobe goes out of business then all bets are off.
The same goes for your RAW files.
They may be readable with future software, but at the same time, they may not be.

I don't share your views on dependency on vendors and their proprietary formats, simply because I don't think it is reliant on the vendors.

I won't be archiving any of my photos as bitmaps, but then, that's a personal choice.

I do know I won't be worried about whether Adobe or whoever is around in future software, and whether that future software will support RAW or other current formats. It occurs to me that, just as I can archive images, I can also archive the software to work with those images. And - if need be - the last operating system that would run the software to work with those images. Recalling my move from the Amiga OS to PC's, it would not exactly be a unique situation to do just that.

Should the imaging world take an unimaginable shift that leaves only bitmaps, then I may be annoyed with the prospect, but I can fire up that software once again and make that conversion. Assuming nobody in the world has bothered to write conversion software, of course.

I do have a fair degree of certainty that, even should Adobe and .psds disappear into the digital dust of time, given the sheer number of files saved as .psds and other similar formats, used not only by photographers but other professionals as well (i.e. my wife the architect), SOMEBODY will be marketing a conversion program for them.

Ultimately, in the end, to each whatever they feel most comfortable with.

For me, storage is ridiculously cheap these days and online backup which is also backed up with tape backup for ALL my data is equally ridiculously cheap. So - again for me - RAW seems to be the best backup medium because I want above all else to at least have a copy of the original file.

And if I had to choose between JPEGs or TIFFs for archiving, then TIFFs would be my first choice.

The scary thing is so many people don't do any backup at all - of any kind. Or, if they do archive, all their archives are in the same house that burned down as the computer that the original files were on.

You can be in a quandry as to what file format you want to back up in, but you do need to back up and you do need at least one reliable backup off site. For me, online backup in conjunction with tape works well. Losing both my original and my backups of my photos in a disaster like a fire, flood, etc would be a real blow. But losing all the files related to my geomatics business would almost certainly put me out of business.

One reliable off site backup. Always.

[johnmflores]

Not so, John. For my sins, I'm the curator at our local museum and we have a large archive of photos dating back to the late 1800s. Most of them are just everyday snapshots of people at the beach, working on the farms, sitting outside their cottages etc. None of them are great works of art, but they document the ongoing life of a community and in that sense they're priceless. I'd love you to see the smiles on people's faces when they come in and ask whether we have a photo of their great grandmother and they walk out clutching a couple of photocopies.

So yes, someone will want to look at your pics at some time in the future. Hence the importance of the discussion here. Archive those photos!

Cool! Thanks Wombat, I'm not just wasting my time LOL!

[Wheatfield]

I don't share your views on dependency on vendors and their proprietary formats, simply because I don't think it is reliant on the vendors.

What happens when a vendor drops support for a proprietary format because it is outmoded?
What happens when an operating system drops support for a particular software required to open a proprietary format?
What happens when computer technology moves on and a needed OS to open a particular program no longer runs.

This sort of thing can happen in the real world. Now, if one is computer savvy enough, then it is probably not an insurmountable problem, but if a person doesn't, for example, know that he has to maintain a legacy computer with an outmoded OS, or doesn't want to deal with a dual boot system, or just plain doesn't want the frustrations and complications that goes along with all this, then format becomes important.
I've heard numerous horror stories from people who have disks full of old files that are no longer viable because the software they are now running won't open old file formats, or the media itself is no longer supported. One could say it's their own damned fault for letting it happen, but a lot of people treat a computer the same way they treat their car. They turn it on, they use it to do what they want, and they shut it off.
Not every user is especially technically inclined towards the care and feeding of a high maintenance device any more than every driver has the know how to rebuild their car's transmission.

For myself, I'd rather keep archived files in a format that stands a good chance of still being viable in a decade or two without having to worry about what software, hardware or firmware I am running in the future.
For myself, it's just the smart way to do it.

I don't keep bitmaps either, but it is probably the safest, most robust image format available. Tiffs are a close second.

For myself, as soon as I could, I switched to DNG files because I feel that for the long haul, it stands a better chance of long term support than PEF. I certainly don't move all my image files to TIFF, and I hope I never need to. At the moment I have somewhat over 23,000 digital image files, so a batch conversion would be a fairly onerous task.

[johnmflores]

What happens when computer technology moves on and a needed OS to open a particular program no longer runs.

Case in point - Adobe just announced that they will not support Photoshop CS3 with the new version of Mac OS (Snow Leopard). This kind of forced obsolescence happens all the time, and it drives me crazy. Thus, industry-adopted formats are the safest in the long run.

[cwood]

FWIW jpg's are pretty good.

lots of people like to say keeping only the jpg is like "throwing out your negatives". To me this would only be true if the prints I had ordered were enormous since there is virtually no loss of resolution with jpg. The obvious advantage of higher "bit" formats is the ability to recover OVER or UNDER exposed regions. My workflow usually fixes the exposure first. Once the exposure is fixed the advantages of the high "bit" format diminish drastically.

I was an early converter to digital (in 1999) and I've taken well over 250,000 images in the past 10 years and I've NEVER lost a jpg (except that one time when my house was robbed in 2001 before I adopted good OFFSITE backup system...).

I would never condone one format over another - each must make their own decision. I have yet to take any pictures I thought were "good" (that's my life-long dream... to take a good picture) and the thought of losing any one single image I took is something I can live with (if all that technical mumbo jumbo people are talking about with jpg's actually happens sometime).

So for me - my "WORK" images are usually edited and get saved as PSD but anything that is not generating actual income is destined to be a jpg on my hard drives (that would be 3 hard drives including 2 onsite and 1 offsite).

Maybe I'm a fool but I like to think ignorance is BLISS

Bottom line - when you are choosing a format make sure you are making that decision for a reason that makes sense to YOU. Lots of people seem to do things in photography because they are told they should but they don't understand the reasons why. Sometimes the advise they are following is plain wrong and sometimes it is very context dependent...