UKC

What size do you keep your images at, the ones which are "good" or you want to keep "forever", or print?

I've been saving mine at 1100 pixels (width for landscape,) but am now finding that too small.

Any advice, thoughts?

Many thanks

In reply to stroppygob:

I save everything that comes off the camera, as it comes off the camera.
If I edit a photo in Photoshop, I still keep the original untouched/saved and work on a copy.
The only time I reduce the quality settings, is for displaying on websites and sending in emails, etc.

In reply to stroppygob:

Original size.

In reply to stroppygob:

Wow, ok, thanks guys.

I've been thinking of keeping the raw files.

I think I'll have to be a bit more selective on the ones I save in order to save disk space.

In reply to stroppygob:

Full size. If it's worth keeping, it's worth keeping at the highest resolution. If it's not, don't keep it. Plus disc space is so cheap these days.

In reply to stroppygob:

How big are the photos you are taking and how many do you take?
Back up hard drives are cheap these days I reckon a life times worth of mine wouldn't fill a £50 drive.

In reply to DubyaJamesDubya:

Hi mate,

I take several hundred a week, of which maybe a dozen will be worth keeping. (Canon 5d mkIII)

In reply to Fraser:

Do you sharpen at the highest resolution?

I think my problem is that I need to categorise; good shots at a smaller resolution for my blog etc, and large sized for keeping / printing.

In reply to stroppygob:



Once processed with some general macro/micro contrast stuff sorted out if relevant, I would normally sharpen for a specific size/medium. That's assuming that it matters - if it's just a memory snapshot I'll just sharpen until it looks right at 'medium size'.

Depending on what you are using to process, you can probably keep the original, and just save different processing versions, or have different standard actions, so that you can pull off versions for different uses.

You should be able to tag your images so that you can sort them lots of different ways, or use stars/colours etc to highlight the major categories.

It's definitely worth checking the cost of portable drives - memory capacity shouldn't prevent you from keeping full resolution original files.

In reply to stroppygob:

Oh, and to be clear, I am only commenting on 'workflow', since you clearly have far more expertise than me at producing lovely images - that's a very nice gallery. Your handling of texture and tone is really nice, so I can see why the sharpening issue is important.

In reply to stroppygob:

Ok that is a lot. Although I would say the dozen-a-week worth keeping should be kept at the highest quality you can.

In reply to hamsforlegs:

If by gallery you mean my stuff on here, I've got a lot better since! But thank you very kindly.

I only venture to the UK every two years or so, I don't tend to put stuff up.

In reply to stroppygob:

This is the shot which started me thinking;

http://www.fatbeetle.com/galleries/nov%2014/slides/kook2.jpg

In reply to stroppygob:

I print some of them for my own records (probably there are over 200 prints over last few years), save RAW and proccessed for JPEG for good quality photos, don't really care about photos been taken for work as I don't work as a photographer anymore. Everything else is saved as RAW.

I used to keep everything in two separate external hard drives and at local hard drive, but now make a copy to external HDD and keep the best JPEGs on cloud.

As I used to take film photos when I was a little bit younger, this does not seem to be excessive work. All films are cut into strips, labeled (including year, camera used, locations, etc.) and then stored in a folder.

In reply to stroppygob:

With such a nice camera and an obvious serious interest in photography, you need to start looking at what photographers call the 'workflow' - how to manage all your pictures and process them in an efficient and effective fashion. You should really also be shooting, keeping and working on RAW files. By all means delete the rubbish, but when you have a keeper, keep the raw.

You can kill two birds with on stone by using software designed to manage your workflow and do basic edits starting with the raw file without creating tonnes of duplicate tiffs/jpegs all over the place. I use Apple's Aperture, but disappointingly Apple are discontinuing this software so I wouldn't suggest you invest in it. The most popular alternative is Adobe Lightroom.

A couple of ideas for general workflow with lightroom {or why LR is great and you should be using it (or equivalent)}.

Firstly delete all of the rubbish, I like the way you can mark photos as rejected as you go thru them, but can then review that before deleting them after. (X to mark for deletion, SHIFT+Delete to select and delete).

Use virtual copies - if you want to have a play with something, a virtual copy lets you see what its looks like in black and white, or a close crop for example, without actually duplicating the image and taking up more filespace. In the lightroom library you see all copies but only one raw exists on disc.

Export for purpose, if I want a 1200px jpeg to email, i've got an export preset for that, so two clicks and the image will be in a folder named email on my desktop. Once sent, I'll usually delete the generated jpegs - it would take as long to find them as it would to generate new ones. An exception would be jpegs for print, which may be kept. You can also export to Flickr or FB directly from LR.

As everyone else suggests, I'll always keep the original full sized RAW or jpeg from the camera, although if you really wanted you could just do that for your best images.

In reply to stroppygob:
To follow up on Dan Arkle's suggestion: another thing about Lightroom (v. 5, anyway) is that you can import your images to an external hard drive and simultaneously create Smart Previews for viewing via your internal drive.

The former means you can keep full size originals without clogging up your internal hdd, the latter that you can view and do quite a bit of editing of your images (but not sharpening and noise reduction) without your external hdd attached. When you do next attach it, you can do full edits, and your Smart Preview edits are automatically uploaded.

In reply to stroppygob:

Thanks all, some really interesting ideas on here, I'll have to investigate further.

In reply to DubyaJamesDubya:


I agree. I'm just backing up my daughter's laptop on to a new WD Mybook hard drive 4TB capacity, it cost just over £100. If you divide that £100 by GB , you will find that cheap as chips.

In reply to Dan Arkle:

Dan mate, could you point me at a tutorial for your "workflow" and deletion proceedure?

I do not have Lightroom, but could possibly "acquire" it, I do have Photoshop cc.

In reply to stroppygob:

Dan might be along in a minute with something better, but it's worth googling for Julieanne Kost's introductory videos on Lightroom. The workflow aspects that Dan is covering above are given a really practical review by her in some of these. I'm at work at the mo but can probably find specific links later.

There's a whole industry based around LR workflow tutorials - Adobe's own are among the better ones. Try googling 'Lightroom queen' as well for a blog that has a lot of basic practical advice.

If you download the trial over a rainy weekend and spend some time playing and googling for help you will quickly get the gist of things.

In reply to hamsforlegs:

My thanks!

In reply to stroppygob:

In addition to hams... suggestions, I've always found this guy's YouTube LR tutorials excellent - Anthony Morganti:

youtube.com/watch?v=CgtJ4HuJIzQ&

I've not actually watched this one yet, but his others are usually more like 15 minutes long, so this is a super-extended one. Hopefully I've not sold you a pup!

FWIW, Lightroom is very inexpensive for what you get, and I didn't resent or regret paying out less than £100 for an excellent piece of software. I watched Anthony Morganti's first few introductory tutorials when I had the 30 day demo version of LR and was swithering and those alone convinced me to buy it.

In reply to stroppygob:

I'm STILL recovering from the concept of having a 5DIII, then saving 1100 pixel wide jpg images as the 'Final Keepers' and deleting the RAWs !

As most have said, just get Lightroom its a no brainier (learn how to use!) and a couple of big internal hard disks (RAIDED so they copy each other automatically if you are lazy). Your hard disk will eventually fail, backup is essential - my images are mirrored in 4 places.

A good 4 TB disk will cost you around £120, a 2 TB one £60.

In reply to ChrisJD:
That's the problem with being self taught Chris.

The 5D3 was bought with bike crash compensation money, so I may have bought above my ability, but why not get a good'n when I could afford it?

My images are not yet of a quality where I want or need to justify saving the raw shots, what would I want them for?

Not only that but the "final keepers" (so far,) are just kept for my blog or for my own pleasure, and only get viewed on my computer monitor,* so I've no need for huge files.

But I'm willing to learn, and part of the learning curve is making mistakes.

*I've not printed any yet

In reply to stroppygob:


My images are not yet of a quality where I want or need to justify saving the raw shots, what would I want them for?

That's like having a roll of 35mm film developed, keeping the prints and chucking the negatives in the bin.
Above all else, save the RAW files - they are the modern equivalent of negatives. Storage is cheap, so no real excuse not to really.

In reply to stroppygob:


I'm self taught as well


It's a good strategy - exactly what I did.


Don't quite know where to start with these - suppose they tie into your comment below and the self taught comment. I'm sure you'll find the best way to suit your needs (most/many/majority? digital photographers wouldn't contemplate deleting RAW file [bar the real junk]. (Many Fuji-X shooters only in-camera jpgs as they are very good)


It would be a real shame if you regretted deleting the RAWs down the line.

In reply to stroppygob:

I save the RAW files, then save the modified versions (after cropping & minimal post-processing) as 8-bit TIFFs.

In reply to ChrisJD:
I'm sure there will be no regrets Chris, they are not worth shedding tears over. As long as I have the saved jpegs I will have my memories.

As of New years though, I will learn a new Lightroom / photoshop method of reviewing and deleting and saving. A new hard drive or two is in the offing.

In reply to Douglas Griffin:

I have to ask; why 8-bit TIFFs?

In reply to stroppygob:

I think it was watching a video by David Noton a few years ago - he explained his workflow; it looked good to me and that's what I've followed ever since (based on Lightroom):

- convert RAW file to 16-bit TIFF
- crop
- clone dust spots
- consider lens profile correction
- set white balance
- recover highlight and shadow detail using Recovery and Fill Light
- adjust overall tonal adjustments using Point Curves
- adjust overall clarity, vibrance, and saturation in the Presence panel
- tweak individual colours using the HSL panel
- make local corrections (mostly dodging and burning) using the Adjustment Brush panel
- fine-tune settings using the Detail and Vignette panels
- sharpen image in the Detail panel
- final output (8-bit TIFF)
- copy to HDD
- back-up (x2)

David Noton reckoned 8-bit to be good enough for the final output.

In reply to Douglas Griffin:

Wow!! My "work flow" wouldn't include half of that stuff.

That's me in the spare room for half a year learning new stuff then.....

In reply to stroppygob:

Interesting replies. I save almost everything as it comes from the camera on my two 500gb HDDs. Now there's the problem how long will the HDDs last? Some manufacturers comment that they will be reliable for three years, mine are OK at 5 years so far. I suspect that they will last a great deal longer with the kind of occasional use I give them. I have a 20gb HDD dating back about 12 years, it still works reliably. Might buy a 2tb as backup. Any comments on life? Suspect HDDs may be a bit like us, some last forever, others don't.

In reply to Douglas Griffin:

Don't see the need to convert RAW file to a Tiff and work on that in LR?

LR is all non-destructive and designed to work directly on RAW files with output at the end (if needed). Big advantages on working in RAW - e.g. recovering highlight.

All that workflow you do in LR doesn't actually take place (the 16 bit file doesn't change). A new file is created when you export (you get a rendered view on screen which is saved in LR system files).

I did a quick Google RAW vs Tiff in LR e.g some discussions here:

http://photo.net/digital-darkroom-forum/00aZtn

In reply to Roddytoo:


I thought the general consensus was that discs were more likely to fail if they weren't used much? I have have several die over the years and always keep double copies of everything,

Chris

In reply to ChrisJD:

Yes, aware that LR is non-destructive.

Will have a look at the link - cheers.

In reply to Douglas Griffin:

It might save you some workflow steps

In reply to Chris Craggs:

Thanks. Now here's a blast from the past, I was at Sheffield City College of education, 3rd year when you arrives as a first year. I am now just about retired, work Friday morning only and do some private tutoring. Well done on guides etc. I am climbing after a long lay off, doing 5A, B, C indoors, building confidence for a trip to N Wales in spring /summer. Best wishes, Happy New Year etc.

In reply to Douglas Griffin:

That's interesting you do your Profile Correction quite early on. I'd seen it suggested somewhere that it's not a bad idea to do it (somewhat illogically) quite late on in the sequence as it can create a fair amount of 'lag' in the processing of subsequent commands. I've certainly found that to be the case, so generally do it as one of the last actions within my workflow. I'd much prefer to do it as one of the first, for obvious reasons, but it almost always results in lag for the remaining commands.

Has anyone else noticed this issue?

In reply to Fraser:


I can't say I've noticed either way, and I personally do the profile correction early on just because it obviously affects a lot of other adjustments you'll make, and there's no point getting to a place you're happy, applying a lens correction and having to go back and change things again.

Having said that, I only ever use lens correction if there is an obvious visual problem with the photo - noticeable distortion, vignetting, etc.

In reply to tehmarks:



I always give lens correction a try, the image is often improved, 'pends how good your glass is I suppose,

Chris

In reply to Roddytoo:


Small world eh? Thanks for the kind regards and the same to you. Good luck with Wales, it will be a lot busier than it was 40 years ago!


Chris

In reply to Fraser:



Ok, I'll bite

WTF is "profile correction"?

In reply to stroppygob:


It corrects the various optical flaws of the lens your photo was taken with based on a profile made by clever people.

In reply to stroppygob:

It's just a tool within Lightroom which auto-adjusts the image based on presets for any given lens. (assuming it's been integrated into LR) All the commonly used lenses are there, so it tweaks the image, correcting things like chromatic aberation and, more usually, lens distortion.

In short, it corrects known 'issues' with the profile of any particular lens to give an optimal image.

https://photographylife.com/lightroom-lens-corrections

In reply to Fraser:

Cheers mate, sounds handy!!

In reply to stroppygob:

Just bought a new 1 tb drive in the sales, exclusively for photos. ($70.00 or about 35 quid.)

In reply to stroppygob:

Just bought a new 1 tb drive in the sales, exclusively for photos. ($70.00 or about 35 quid.)

Happy saving!!!

In reply to stroppygob:

Lightroom also makes it easy to convert to Adobe DNG (Digital Negative) file format instead of RAW. They usually save a small amount of disk space over the original and maintain 100% of the image quality.

As each camera's RAW format is slightly different I wonder how well their files will be supported by software if you open them in 10, 20, 30 years time too. The DNG format is a little more standardised in that respect too.

In reply to stroppygob:


I'm quite sure that you'll be losing highlight/shadow information going from RAW -> 8-bit Tiff.

RAW is typically 12 or 14-bit, you can obviously save in 16-bit Tiff without losing anything but you might as well just use DNG as above.