Digital negatives

[aam1234]

If you shoot in jpeg and you want to preserve a photo as a digital negative, how about saving it as a Tiff file. Sure, it doesn't have all the info as in a RAW file but you will have an "original" which you can play with its copies.

Does that make sense, what do you think.

[chris.bailey]

I always save my jpgs out of PS as TIFF's though I tend to keep the RAW or JPGS as my "negative". I know then that the TIFFS have been "played" with.

[Jesper]

You can also just save the JPEG that comes out of the camera in a separate "originals" folder, and save edited versions somewhere else. Make sure you make the original JPEG files read-only so that you don't accidentally overwrite them.

[scottbergerphoto]

It is always adviseable to save any non raw file as a Tiff file, unlesss you NEVER plan to edit the file. Each time you open and edit and resave a Jpeg file you will lose data. That isn't the case with Tiff. If you shoot Jpeg, I suggest you save as Tiff in you image editor.
Scott

[aam1234]

Is there any advantage of saving the original jpeg as tiff over making it a "read only" jpeg then make copies of it to play with (as Jesper suggested).

[PacAce]

Is there any advantage of saving the original jpeg as tiff over making it a "read only" jpeg then make copies of it to play with (as Jesper suggested).

No there isn't. I concur with Jesper 100%. :)

[Jon]

Scott's recommendation will insulate you from inadvertently re-saving an edited file as a JPG, with attendant loss of quality ("save", "file exists", quick rename, Oh S*** it's Jpeg!)