Broad Question - Long Term Viability

I have photographs of relatives that are over 100 years old. These are cherished treasures.

I was thinking of the 'new' digital workflow embodied by software like Lightroom. You import RAW files and make adjustments that are really just software overlays. You can export at will.

Down the road, will anyone be able to read these RAW files?

Absent Adobe 2050....will the LR overlay adjustments be meaningful in 50 years? 100 years?

Will our decendents need to invent RAW convertors for defunct RAW formats and then re-process all of our shots if they desire images from the past?

So save as raw AND jpeg? jpeg isn't going anywhere. No offense but you seem extremely paranoid. Will you posterity 50-100 years from now even care about photo quality (I know a lot of people I'm related to think some absolutely terrible pictures are amazing).

I don't think it is a paranoid thought at all. I've been around computers since the mid 80's. Nearly every portable storage medium has become obsolete.RAW files are bad because they are proprietary. It is not conceivable to think that software can be saved and used 20 years from now to open a RAW file as processors change, software becomes unsupported.

JPGs, because of their proliferation, are a safe bet for awhile. Something better will come along, and when it does convert and move on. Some say DNG will be be around for awhile, I'd feel better if all camera makers went to the same RAW format.

Maybe, maybe not - but it's certainly a question to ponder about given the proprietary nature of RAW files. That's why I personally save my treasured shots - post process - in JPEG too. Don't only keep RAW copies.

??Print them??

Interesting point about JPEGs being a safe bet for a while.

I usually shoot RAW+JPEG (for a number of reasons) but have not previously thought about archival considerations for JPEGs. Besides filling up CF cards quickly and buffer issues at high speed, are there any disadvantages to shooting RAW+JPEG?

I would think that it might be an easy way to create an archival back-up of the RAW files, particularly if you don't batch process.

JeffreyG wrote in post #7174220
I have photographs of relatives that are over 100 years old. These are cherished treasures.

I was thinking of the 'new' digital workflow embodied by software like Lightroom. You import RAW files and make adjustments that are really just software overlays. You can export at will.

Down the road, will anyone be able to read these RAW files?

Absent Adobe 2050....will the LR overlay adjustments be meaningful in 50 years? 100 years?

Will our decendents need to invent RAW convertors for defunct RAW formats and then re-process all of our shots if they desire images from the past?

Good that you are wondering these questions! I've been posting on that topic, and on the topic of general accessiblity to digital data stored on media types no longer supported in the future, and even on harddrives which use an interface spec long obsoleted...the many harddrive interface specs between the early IBM PC harddrive and now are hard to keep track of!

People have tended to resort to the "I have my JPGs", when I have raised question about continued support for bankrupted or purchased digital camera companies whose RAW file formats are quickly forgotten. Nikon has more than one file format for its own RAW files, so it is not hard to envision one day that Nikon itself drops some of the supported formats, even if it continues to exist as a corporation.

DNG files, while not proprietary to a camera company, will be reliant upon the continued existence of Adobe. One only has to look back to the computing giant, Digital Equipment Corp, to witness a corporate beheamoth that no longer exists...so what about any proprietary data formats that it might have used?!

I have pointed to these unsolved issues as a potential for photos lost to the historians of the future. Will photos of the world's first hybrid vehicle exist 100 years from now? And will Tommy be able to retrieve photos of his great, great grandparents, to show off to his children?

Printed images, how archival are those? We have guesses about lifetimes based only on accelerated life testing, but that itself is a guess about long term degradation. I have silver halide negatives just as good now as they were when shot 40 years ago...will my Epson prints be around like that? The CLAIM are 'yes' but they are merely claims. Only a few years ago, magnetic media was the 'only proven digital storage with a 50 year history', yet now we are learning about media rot making mag tapes useless. There goes another claim!

It's an intriguing question....for about 30 seconds!

Then you realize that one can barely guess what the *next* version of PS will do. Trying to guess 25 versions into the future borders on pure madness.

There's a good chance that in the next 25 years, some one will come up with something that could potentially replace RAW and/or JPEG. But it's really impossible to speculate what that might be....until it actually happens.

But fear not -- these kinds of things are NOT likely to happen quickly. We'll see it coming, just like we did when we went from video tapes to DVD's to Blu-Ray. If a new standard comes on the scene, rest assured someone will write a program that enables us to 'up convert' or 'back read' older formats just fine. The sheer *demand* of all the JPGS and RAW users by even the year 2015 is a pretty good safety net that all of these files aren't going to be lost unto oblivion -- that's just economics 101.

Thanks for everyone's replies.

I know I framed this question in the context of long term archives, but I'm not sure that even one or two decades are too far out to be worried about.

I had an Apple IIe in the mid nineteen eighties. I wonder if I could recover anything that was written on the computer's word processor today? My current computer doesn't even have a drive for the 5 1/4 discs that it used. There are lots of defunct languages, so who can guarantee that neither CR2 nor the LR metadata will go the same way?

Just losing the metadata would be a blow. Can you imagine having to re-post-process every single shot you have ever taken?

I do what most do I suppose, I export JPEGs and I make prints. It's the best you can do.

For long term archiving I'd probably consider prints as the best solution. Done on good quality optical brightener free archival paper, using pigment inks, and stored properly, it is said that they should last 200 years.

Otherwise, it's a matter of staying alert to technology as it changes with time, and migrate to whatever seems appropriate as it appears.

I read recently that if the human race vanished from the planet, eventually only the Egyptian stone carvings would be left. All our "modern" recording solutions would become impossible to read very quickly.

I still have an Apple II somewhere

I don't worry about a Raw format no longer being supported: If an image is that important in 2020, I can take an old Mac from the attic and use that to convert the shot to a format that *can* be read...

Frankly, I don't think there will be many shots that important

JeffreyG wrote in post #7174220
I have photographs of relatives that are over 100 years old. These are cherished treasures.

They looked better 100 years ago. You don't love the images any less because of it. Your descendants won't love your images any less if they're not processed to the max either.

As for me, I'll be long dead in 100 years so I won't be losing any sleep over it.

BeritOlam wrote in post #7175329
But fear not -- these kinds of things are NOT likely to happen quickly. We'll see it coming, just like we did when we went from video tapes to DVD's to Blu-Ray. If a new standard comes on the scene, rest assured someone will write a program that enables us to 'up convert' or 'back read' older formats just fine. The sheer *demand* of all the JPGS and RAW users by even the year 2015 is a pretty good safety net that all of these files aren't going to be lost unto oblivion -- that's just economics 101.

Entire corporations used electronic word processors from Wang and other companies a mere 30 years ago, which employed proprietary data formats. It would be natural to assume that IBM and other giant corporations would be enough economic incentive for some company to provide 'conversion'...do you think you can find a Wang-to-Word convertor today?


BTW, there is ONE conversion service that does exist, but I doubt it has the capacity to serve the needs of every former Wang using company in the world.

René Damkot wrote in post #7176474
I still have an Apple II somewhere

I don't worry about a Raw format no longer being supported: If an image is that important in 2020, I can take an old Mac from the attic and use that to convert the shot to a format that *can* be read...

Frankly, I don't think there will be many shots that important

René, the importance of all artifactual evidence is inherent to all historians and anthopologists! It becomes especially important, the less there is that can be found. Unfortunately both you and your attic will be long gone even 50 years from now.

Nevertheless, the historians and anthopologists might have found a very important clue, if they could look thru your 'unimportant' photos. Imagine a later person in your family tree discovering the cure for all forms of cancer, and they cannot trace the lineage back any earlier than your photos, where the evidence is lost prior because your photos are unretrievable.

Wilt,

You attributed cdi's quote to me.

For people who are unconcerned, the simplest approach is to shoot with no CF card in the camera. Archival is then not a concern. PP is dramatically shortened too.