Best file format to save photos

[reemas]

I wanted to know how most people save their photos for archiving after working on a RAW file in photoshop (or similiar). I used to use JPEG or RAW. RAW is big. But afer editing in photoshop what way do you recommend?

Some people said .tiff. That format is huge! 40 -60 mb per photo is tough. Any other good ways to save? Photoshop PSD? Photoshop RAW?

I'm lost.

[Rob612]

I personally keep the all RAW (with the XML file that contains the corrections I've made) and for the keepers I use uncompressed TIFF. It's huge, but IMHO its the best way to go.

[Poco]

You can also compress the TIFFs. LZW or ZIP compression is lossless but can make it significantly smaller.

For the heavy editing if you use a lot of layers then PSD is really the only way to go if you think you might ever want to go back and tweak it. I don't edit many files that much, but I just did one tonight that is now 90MB with all the layers.

Disk space is cheap. Getting back the highest quality photo out of your archive is priceless.

[etaf]

i save the raws to two copies of DVD's so i always have at the minimum the originals from the camera..
I then also save the TIFFS & PS files if i have carried out a lot of manipulation.
if all i have done is a bit of sharpening and levels - i dont bother to save the tiffs or PS files onto DVD

[tim]

PSD.

[Andy_T]

Another vote for PSD.

Also, never forget to save the image you have worked at *before* applying USM to it.

Best regards,
Andy

[jfrancho]

Each CF card gets burned to a CD-R. I use several 512mb cards, so each always fits on one CD. I save all the conversions to PSD files. Then there various output files - web, printer, etc. File size isn't an issue for me yet, though I estimate that sometime early next year, it may. I only archive the "mostly finished" PSD files to three locations: seperate storage server with RAID 5 and tape backup, DVD-R, local machine (RAID 1). With all this I've still managed to dork things up: I deleted some T-ball pics of my son after I uploaded them to the photolab (I was a little too excited to see the pics), before I had backed tham up. The lesson is: whatever strategy you use, you must continue to be diligent and consistant.

[BrandonSi]

Process RAW, save to Tiff. Open in photoshop, make changes, save as photoshop .pdf with ZIP compression. I put all of those on a 4.0GB partition and when it's full I burn the whole parition to DVD, then delete it, and start over.

I do photoshop .PDF to preserve all the regular .PSD information plus vector layers and to get the compression.

[R1 Kid]

I usually jus save to tiff. Like Poco said. Disk space is so cheap. What is it now like just over $200 for a 200GB external HD with built in 8-1 card reader by Western Digital. To me that is extremely extremely cheap.