what do you do with your raw photos?

L

lisabranka

New member
I've been pushing myself to use the raw mode with my DSLR and now find myself with these huge files of photos. I've saved some as jpg after I've touched them up the way I want them. Do you save ALL the raw or do you convert them to jpg and then ditch them?
 
I only shoot RAW for special "things" not every day photos. but when I shoot RAW, I save a back up DVD of the RAW files. I convert all files to Jpeg (after retouched), delete all the RAW files and then burn a back up DVD of the Jpeg files. Might seem like over kill but it works for me!!! :D
 
Back up, back up, back up. As soon as they're uploaded, I make a DVD of them and back them up to my EHD. I leave them on my hard drive for a month and then I make another DVD which I sent with Andrew to his office.
 
I fix and convert to .jpg then dump. Now, if it were a really important event (like a wedding or something), I'd prob. keep the RAW files, but otherwise, I dump them.
 
I've been shooting Raw for about 6 months, and so far I've just kept the raw files, as well as the jpegs I output from Lightroom. I don't have any real spaces issues yet though. I think that once I do, I'll probably burn the RAW files to DVD (2 copies, one for home one for the office just in case of catastrophe) and then delete them from my HD/EHD.
 
Good question!! I need to do something with mine! Mostly, I've converted them to jpeg and then deleted them, but if I haven't had time to really work with them, I would like to keep them in RAW for awhile! I might burn mine to DVD.
 
Right now I am keeping them because there are not that many of them. I only shoot in raw on special occasions. I'll probably just keep them even when there are a lot. I backup my photos every month, both the edited and unedited & remove them to my EHD at every 6 months as it is.
 
I shoot in RAW exclusively so that I can guarantee a great exposure in the end. I automatically convert to DNG upon import. Then I make all of my adjustments with Adobe Camera RAW and export the batch at highest resolution JPG. I upload the JPGs to Flickr and then everything goes to an EHD. I back up with Mozy.
 
I keep the RAW files. I have an EHD, so that helps. :) Ya never know when you want to "update" a photo with a new technique you have learned. ;)
 
You mean you don't all have 80GB of RAW files taking up space on your laptop...not that I do or anything. :blink: :D

This is actually a rather timely thread as I've been trying to decide what I want to do with mine. After 3 years of shooting RAW, it's just taking up too much space. Right now I back them up right away to a drive in my DH's computer and to Mozy as well but I also keep them on my laptop where they get uploaded to Mozy...again. lol

My problem is I don't edit photos until I use them on layouts so I don't really want to convert them all to jpeg ahead of time. BUT, thinking about it, most of the edits I do in Lightroom are fairly simple and consistent, anything "special" I do is in Photoshop, so I could probably start batch editing and just saving jpeg files on my laptop. Definitely something to think about.
 
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If you open your RAW files in Photoshop, it should pop up the Camera Raw window. That's how it works in CS3 anyway.
 
yeah when I open it in CS4 it pops up the window to do work in..is that what the adobe camera raw does?

what about viewing the raw files?
 
It should pop up a window that says Camera Raw at the top and that has sliders along the right to adjust your photos. You should be able to view your raw files in Bridge. I use Lightroom so I don't know much about how Bridge works but it should be able to do that.
 
I keep all mine. I don't convert to JPG unless I am printing the images at the photo-store, e-mailing them or posting them online. For LO's I use the RAW-files as well.
 
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