workflow Q: How much to compress a JPEG?

Most of you probably modify raw files as part of your workflow, but do you batch convert to JPEG when your done?

If so, what compression do you use? 8, 10?

I'm been thinking about batch converting all my changes to one of the newer formats like JPEG 2000 or HD Photo.

Is there a convenient way to make this happen?

I tend to use RAW or NDNG as my 'negative' and only save out to jpg for web/DVD or online printing. If I want to save out the results of my workflow I use tiffs.

I have to admit that I increasingly use Lightroom for my whole workflow so the notion of saving out to another format becomes less of an issue.

You will not see a huge difference between jpg 80 or jpg 100. jpg 2000 is better but of limited application. The differences start if you subsequently load and re-save jpgs and the degradation is cumulative.

really eh, those raw files dont eat up your hd?

bowlesbe wrote in post #3102815
really eh, those raw files dont eat up your hd?

Would you throw out your original film negatives?

If I have my own server to host the image = 12

If I am attaching = 8-10 to avoid jaggies.

Never below 8. I didn't spend the equivalent of a third world country's GDP with Canon to have jpeg artifacts in my shots.

I also have 2 external hard drives for my laptop. There is almost a terabyte of hard storage in my house. Backing up to DVD and my safe deposit box is monthly.

R Hardman wrote in post #3104224
Would you throw out your original film negatives?

Of course not, but we're dealing with different stuff here.

With digital photography, I can afford to take a shot with different aperture settings and different ISOs, to see which result is the best in teh end. I can also try many differnet itneresting compositions, of which only a fraction will actually be interesting. The outcome is that I take way more photos with digital than I coujld with film. I did not have the capacity to develop that many with chemicals nor did I have the will or the time. The ability to take and sort later and find out which compositions work best I find to be extrmeely educationaly because I can see which types of compositions are the most interesting. You just can't always make the best judgements through a viewer, especially a samll 30d view finder.

The net result is more pictures than I need. More pictures, , perhaps, than it makes sense to keep on a hard drive.

bowlesbe wrote in post #3104288
Of course not, but we're dealing with different stuff here.

No we aren't. A negative is a negative. I have over 75 000 images archived on external HDDs. HDD space is cheap.

Delete the crap, i used to chuck entire rolls of film and negative if they were pointless.

I have about 40,000 RAW images on my hard drives, all backed up to an external drive stored offsite, and JPG versions on DVD in a third location. I will never delete them. I do, however, delete the shots that aren't up to the standard I require. If I shoot a wedding and take, say, 900 photos, I delete maybe 50 that are just crap, I deliver 300 or so proofs, and I keep all the images until the album and print orders are done. Once that's done I delete everything except the 300 proofs they were shown. I keep them around for a while in case I need to get eyes from a photo in case someone blinked.

I've gone back to an image 2 years after the customer ordered it, and have been able to process it to a much better print as technology and my skills advance.

Re JPG I use Q12 unless I have a good reason to use otherwise. Storage and bandwidth is cheap. One day I may batch to DNG, but that'll take quite a lot of time and processing power... and there's no need yet, will done it when the RAW format gets a bit old.

bowlesbe wrote in post #3104288
Of course not, but we're dealing with different stuff here.

With digital photography, I can afford to take a shot with different aperture settings and different ISOs, to see which result is the best in teh end. I can also try many differnet itneresting compositions, of which only a fraction will actually be interesting. The outcome is that I take way more photos with digital than I coujld with film. I did not have the capacity to develop that many with chemicals nor did I have the will or the time. The ability to take and sort later and find out which compositions work best I find to be extrmeely educationaly because I can see which types of compositions are the most interesting. You just can't always make the best judgements through a viewer, especially a samll 30d view finder.

The net result is more pictures than I need. More pictures, , perhaps, than it makes sense to keep on a hard drive.

Yes, of course it doesn't make sense to keep that many on hard drives, if you are doing a lot of experimenting. If only a fraction are interesting, then just keep those - learn from the others then delete the ones that didn't work for you. But, of the ones that are interesting, keep them in the best quality format you can (RAW, TIFF etc). You don't need to stick to the HDD inside your computer, external HDDs are very good value nowadays and you can get around 15-20,000 RAW images on a 300Gb drive which costs around £80 (in the UK), granted you will need to mirror to a second, off-site, HDD or other storage media, so you can double that amount. It still works out at less than a penny a shot stored though, which isn't a lot to pay for keeping good quality original images.

I have several external 300Gb+ HDDs sat on top of my computer, with duplicates at a remote location, compared to the money I have spent on everything else photographic they are a drop in the ocean.

Great points, I really appreciate peoples input on this. I think the point I need to improve on is deleting junk. Seems like every time i take photos I end up with 4 GB less on my HD.

Another problem is I really like the ability to use windows viewer to look at my files, which takes up too much space because I convert them at high quality.

I am about to buy a computer, and I think I will actually get my new computer with 3 harddrives:

- the 200GB I have already, for apps and everything non-photo

- two replicate 500GB drives for photos and other things I cannot afford to lose

Fires can destroy two hard drives as quickly as one...

fires... what is your protection then?

bowlesbe wrote in post #3105451
fires... what is your protection then?

Backups for mission critical materials should be offsite.

Your data is only as good as your backup.

bowlesbe wrote in post #3105451
fires... what is your protection then?

Offsite backups in two locations on two different media.