What do you do with JPG's?

I just started working with raw files, never tried it before. I took a class on lynda.com on the Lightroom 3, learned quite a lot, and went ahead. After I was done with processing, I exported the shots into JPG's and uploaded to Picasa web (I am still struggling with Flickr). The question is - what do you do with the jpegs after that? Do I need them? The raw files are still on the disk, the jpegs - online. Will I need the jpegs again?

I tend to keep both, especially for my professional work. jpegs are pretty small. I also figure one day the RAW files I have (starting with the old Canon 300D) won't be readable forever, so keeping the image in a standard format is a good idea.

My professional images I keep in RAW, DNG, and jpeg.

I keep the jpegs "archived" in an external hard drive but not re-imported into Lightroom. They are only there as a convenient reference/source when I want the file that I see in my Web host (PBase).

My original Raws are in Lightroom, a few tiff "project files" and then jpeg shoots from the "old days" and shoots from my daughter, who shoots jpegs.

I upload directly to Flickr and Facebook from within Lightroom 3 - so for many shots I never even see the jpeg.

For the work where I need to produce a jpeg (e.g. for giving to someone else, or sending to the printer) I usually delete it when I'm done with it.

technically you could delete the JPEGS and just recreate them if needed, but I just keep them around for sharing and prints, etc.

Right now I'm at that stage where storing both the RAW and JPEG is not a problem, but the volumes have gone up and I know storage will be an issue in the future. I feel JPEG's are very convenient to share/upload/view on most applications/websites, so I tend to keep them (for now). As it is, they take a fraction of the space of any RAW image.

Thanks to all for sharing. Still wondering what the majority of people do - discard jpegs, or keep them? I am not professional, I do not have paying clients, so all I need are the jpegs to upload to Flickr, and to show my photos from the PC on a large screen TV. What could be the situation when I would need the jpegs again?

Hmm...I don't think you will get a "statistic" just from people chiming in! Even POTN polls are, well, not "scientific", they just reflect those who choose to participate.

But, if it's numbers you want, you may as well start a poll. But realize there will be a difference between those of us who have a defined workflow and keep "final output jpegs" as part of the workflow, those of us who have a defined workflow and discard those jpegs, those of us who use jpegs for further processing as part of a defined workflow, and then those of us who don't have a defined workflow, so may or may not keep or discard jpegs for whatever reason, sort of "if it feels good, do it!"...

And, being specific about if this pertains only to people who shoot Raw or not? I dunno -- people who shoot jpegs will also produce jpegs resized for the Web or print or whatever...

Disk space is cheap. Jpegs are small.

nathancarter wrote in post #13140443
I upload directly to Flickr and Facebook from within Lightroom 3 - so for many shots I never even see the jpeg.

For the work where I need to produce a jpeg (e.g. for giving to someone else, or sending to the printer) I usually delete it when I'm done with it.

+1.

I'm a complete amateur hobbyist. Let's say I went out on a hike with my fiance. Here's what I do.

1) Review the pictures in Zoombrowser and toss all the complete garbage pics.
2) Import the rest of the raws into LR3, flagging more for permanent deletion (from disk), and others as 'picks' for editing.
3) Export the edited raws to full-size jpegs to the original raw file's location.
4) Use LR3's Flickr module to upload resized (1024 long edge) jpegs of those edited raws.
5) Backup My Pictures & My Music folder weekly, or as desired (sometimes not as often as that) to my 320gb Seagate FreeAgent GO Hdd. Still plenty of space available. Indeed - I'm no pro shooting brazillions of photos.

Why do I export full-size jpegs to the harddrive? Pretty well the only real reason is for simplicity of sharing, and viewing at a later date. Using Windows Explorer and Windows Picture Viewer is just simple, and when family come over and ask me to see pics..I don't have to give them a set of instructions to open a particular application or whatever.. I just point them to the directory.

Since the wife and I only shoot raw, the only time there are jpegs are if we need to send an image to one our clubs's contests or make a small email attachment. Those jpegs may stay in the LR folder with the original raw image..or get deleted.

If you have the original raw images, especially with any post processing history...I can not think of any reason to keep a lots of jpegs. In LR or other program you can always create jpegs or tiffs as needed.

I do some processing on the raw files, then export to jpeg, touch them up a little more. I keep one "original" jpeg to spin off other copies, as I don't want to repeat steps every time I want another jpeg.

I do all my processing on a Windows PC. When I want to show the photos to my friends on a screen, I copy them on a stick and bring to my MacBook connected to a large screen TV. There is no problem when showing jpegs on a Mac. But if I do not have jpegs any more, what software would you recommend to view the raw files on a Mac?

for handling raw files on a Mac....try Aperture, Lightroom, Photoshop Elements (version 10 was announced this week). I believe that Adobe lets you install LR, PSE on two machines (ie windows desktop and mac laptop) with the same license provided you are not using both at once. So you can have the same programs on the desktop and the laptop.