How do you deal with your Original photos

[Stefan A]

I am having a dilemna trying to figure out the best way to handle original photos on my computer.

1. What do you consider an original photo? Completely unaltered photo directly from your camera? Slightly altered?

2. How do you seperate edited photos vs. original photos?

3. Do you "upconvert" your photos before calling it an original photo? For example, when I take a photo with the highest resolution and lowest compression, it ends up being around 3 megabytes. But if I open it up in my editing program and save it as a jpg - but with 0 compression, it becomes a much larger file - maybe 8 MB. So should that now be considered an original photo?

4. Do you consider your edited photo - cropped, sharpened, other visual adjutments - your new originals. Since they are probably better looking shots?

So my main concern is dealing with original and edited photos. Right now I have a folder I call original photos. And on my desktop I have a folder called photos used for web. I mainly put photos that I have resized for this forum in that folder. I don't know if I should make minor adjutments to the original photos - like orientation, or upconverting - and still consider them my originals.

Thanks,
Stefan

[Trinimoi]

I have a folder (Photo_Archives) for photos transferred directly from my camera... then another folder for Web sized photos (Web_Images) and then all my regularly edited photos are filed away depending on who and what group they belong to: Family, Friends, Travel, Misc, etc...

Works well enough for me... for now.

[BullittMan]

I just have two folders, one called "Unedited" and the other "Edited". When I download photos off my camera they go straight to the Unedited folder. Then when I get around to sharpening or just playing around with them, I save the changed ones in Edited, no matter if it was something as simple as a small rotation.
My reasoning for this is that I know I will always have an origional straight from the camera copy in one folder, and can save any edited versions in the other one, allows me to play around with my photos and not worry about accidently saving over the origional picture.

[Cindi]

I keep both my original (straight from the camera) and the edited version in the same folder. I will keep the same file name for the edited version, but add a -1 behind the name of the original. For resized pics I do the same, but add an - R behind the name. I think it's more of a personal preference as to what works best for you. I prefer to have all my pictures both original and edited together. Now once I burn the pics to a CD I then put all my individual folders into one big one labeled copied and the date I copied them. That way I know they were burned to a CD, but I can still access them on my computer.

[Stefan A]

Thanks for the replies so far. What about the "upconverting" part of my question? Do you consider a picture where you have reduced the compression a better copy than the original?

Stefan

[bkstyl]

I keep both my original (straight from the camera) and the edited version in the same folder. I will keep the same file name for the edited version, but add a -1 behind the name of the original. For resized pics I do the same, but add an - R behind the name. I think it's more of a personal preference as to what works best for you. I prefer to have all my pictures both original and edited together. Now once I burn the pics to a CD I then put all my individual folders into one big one labeled copied and the date I copied them. That way I know they were burned to a CD, but I can still access them on my computer.

Basically I do the same as Cindi.

I really don't do any "upconverting".

[Spiral Photo]

I simply make folders labeled by date, like this: "2005-06-01"

If I want to be able to spot what is in the folder without having to browse through all of them, I'll label it like this: "2005-06-01 Colorado Vacation"

This way the photos stay in chronological order, and it makes browsing easy. I also burn to disc with this same folder structure.

[dyle]

Thanks for the replies so far. What about the "upconverting" part of my question? Do you consider a picture where you have reduced the compression a better copy than the original?

Stefan

As far as I know, if you re-save a jpeg, even with zero compression, it won't make a difference in the quality. The thing is, the original is already compressed, so all the "trimmed" data from the compression is gone. I believe that when you "upconvert" it, it pretty much saves a direct copy of the original. Why the file size increases, I don't know but if you also resave the file into a, let's say, tiff, with no conversion, the file size also increases so it could be related to that.

[miklon]

Is it actually possible to do any "upconverting" of jpeg images? Since jpeg is a form of destructive compression I don't see how you could actually retrieve any lost data by lessening the compression grade. In my opinion, the most accurate copy should be the compressed jpeg you get from the camera's image processing software. When you decompress the image, you may perhaps add data to the file (since the size increases), but I don't believe that it's the same data that is lost in the camera compression procedure.

Edit: Dyle was quicker. :)

[RossW]

Thanks for the replies so far. What about the "upconverting" part of my question? Do you consider a picture where you have reduced the compression a better copy than the original?

Stefan

No. There's no way to undo the compression and re-gain any losses to image quality. (That's not the same thing as saying some post-processing can reduce certain artifacts.) The best you can do is minimize additional losses by saving in a lossless format (best) or using minimal compression in a lossy format.

This sort of thing was discussed at some length -- at times with "more heat than light" generated -- a few months ago... probably in the "post-processing' forum. I believe the consensus was that any save in JPEG format would create some loss of image quality; even simply opening a JPEG file and re-saving without manipulation would re-compress (with loss) what had already been compressed. I always keep an un-touched, straight-from-the-camera version of my images, so that I can always go back to an "original" if necessary.

[Action_Man]

When my desktop get too full Stefan i have mass deleting session :D ...

[Jon]

Everything goes straigth onto a hard drive; one folder for each camera, and keeping Canon's file and folder numbering system, slightly modified, within that. So my A80 photos go into \DCIM-A80\101C_A80\101-0134_A80.JPG for instance.These don't get touched, altered, edited, or anything ever. From there, I copy files onto a second drive with subdirectories by category. These are the files I'll edit. While a file's being edited, it gets saved in Paint Shop Pro's native format (keeping the original file name, so I can track back to it). The finished edit is saved as a TIFF, and if I need a JPEG, the JPEG's renamed with a further -SM, -MD, -LG based on the size.

Both the original folders and the edited, categorized folders get backed up th DVD or CD, depending on size - mostly DVD. Cards don't get erased/formatted until the files are at least 2, if not 3, other places.

Compression - you'll notice my workflow doesn't use "lossy", JPEG compression (with the DSLRs I shoot RAW + Small JPEG) until the very end. The thing to remember about re-saving a JPEG is that if you've specified, say, 80% compression the compression algorithm will average nearby values, so tonal nuances are lost. If you save again using the same level of compression, it does the same averaging process to the already degraded image, further degrading it. So if you must save as JPEG during intermediate stages, save with as little compression as possible.

[Stefan A]

I once tried to post a .jpg on this forum which I had coverted from a tif. It wouldn't let me do that. I am talking about using the POTN servers.

Stefan

[Stefan A]

For those of you that keep an online photo album, what format and resolution pics do you upload?

Stefan

[Jon]

JPEG and 640x480 in general.

[bndaidbob]

I keep my original shots un altered on a CD or DVD and a re sized version on my desktop at the same settings as jon.

[jrobert]

Thanks for the replies so far. What about the "upconverting" part of my question? Do you consider a picture where you have reduced the compression a better copy than the original?
"Original" means to me what came from my camera. If I have that, than anything I do to it after that, I can always repeat. If I've only saved a converted copy of it (any kind of conversion, including (re-)saving as jpeg), that conversion is committed.

-jeff-

[ba15ck]

I upload everything directly into iPhoto--if i make minor changes to a file within iphoto, iphoto automatically saves the original. If I am going to make more than just minor changes, then I transfer the original to PS and save it under a different title in a different folder then upload back into iphoto--then I have the og, and edited version in my photo library.

I like to keep the edited versions that I like a lot in a separate photo album that way I can quickly access my edited files.

My library is organized by date the file was created (the day the pic was taken)--aobut every 3-4k pictures I create a new library--though I may change this to annual libraries whether that is more or less than3-4k pictures. It starts to get difficult thumbing through more than 4k pictures in one library.

I save all of my pictures on an external (lacie 200gig) harddrive and backup to DVD about every month or so (unless I haven't taken that many pics that month).

[snowrdr]

I save all of my pictures on an external (lacie 200gig) harddrive and backup to DVD about every month or so (unless I haven't taken that many pics that month).

That's a great idea, I need to get an external drive also. I had a power outage this weekend and it took awhile to get my PC back up and running. I would hate to lose all my pictures...

I organize my pictures by camera --> then by year --> then by subject
My photoshop organizer shows them in chronological order, but by filing them by subject, it makes it easier for me to look back and find the pictures I want. :D

[john a]

Are you familiar with the term DAM? (Digital Asset Management)
http://www.thedambook.com/
For my money, "original" means as it comes out of the camera. I always save my original. As computing power and software improve in the future, there will likely be opportunities to process these original files with better results than currently possible.