BetterPhoto Q&A
Category: Tips on Organizing Photos

Tracy Brewer		Saving Photos from a Digital Camera I just purchased my first digital camera (Canon Rebel Digital). My question is what is the best way to save my photos to a CD and still keep the quality that they have on my camera? To love this question, log in above July 10, 2004

Vince Broesch		The most data is in the RAW, but a TIFF would be fine for most people. Be careful with those neat, small JPG files, because the price of that small file is data lost forever. www.PhotoAgo.com To love this comment, log in above July 11, 2004

Michael Kaplan		Vince is right. If you shoot RAW like I do, I always keep the RAW file as that is the data directly from the CMOS sensor of the camera. No matter what I do I know I always can start again with the original shot. I will give you my workflow as maybe that will help you. I first sort through the pictures using a great freeware program called Pixort. http://www.jotto.no/pixort/ Jahn the creator wrote the program because he got the Canon 10D and saw how many more pictures he was taking compared to 35mm and needed a way to quickly sort out the good from the bad. Why spend time processing pictures that are no good? I have as many as almost 2000 pictures of my last big shoot and processed 1225 pictures for the photo CDs I created. Needless to say there was a lot of work involved and Pixort saved me a lot of time. Thx Jahn. I then convert all the good ones from RAW to TIFF. Tiff is a lossless format and the RAW will make an 18MB TIF file if you are in 8bit mode or a 32MB file if you are working in 16Bit mode (Photoshop CS). 8 is all you really need as that is what you will end up with anyway. I then do any editing or cropping and save the final in JPG. I keep ALL the files, backing up the RAW to DVD first and later backing up all the other versions. While I'm giving out some great freeware solutions to the workflow, I will add another program, JAlbum. http://jalbum.net/ This is the best Web page-creating software I could find, and the price is certainly right. Neatimage has a freeware version for reducing noise. http://www.neatimage.com/ I also use a program I purchased called iMatch. http://www.photools.com/ This is a photo database program that you can use to sort pictures, edit, create output (slideshow, web pages, etc.) and most importantly keep track of your photos. I keep an offline cache so I can group my photos and index them and be able to find any picture I have ever taken and see the thumbnail without having to find the CD/DVD I stored it on, yet if I need the picture it tells me which disk it is on. It is a great program with a 30-day free trial available. Most importantly, enjoy actually using your new camera and keep taking photos. Michael Kaplan Canon EOS-10D http://www.pbase.com/mkaplan To love this comment, log in above July 13, 2004

- Greg McCroskery Contact Greg McCroskery Greg McCroskery's Gallery		Tracy: All the above info is good stuff! A couple added notes. Always save your JPG print files at the highest- quality setting your editing program allows. Never re-save an original JPG - keep the original as a back-up/source file. Be very careful about the brands of CDs you use to save files. Many cheap brands use dyes that can deteriorate in just a few years. God Bless, Greg To love this comment, log in above July 13, 2004

Marc Apfelstadt		Per Greg's thoughts... actually, since JPG is a "lossy" format (loses data with each save), I always save JPG as TIF, PSD (photoshop), PNG or another loss-less format. Personally, I take shots with JPG at highest resolution for now in my Digital Rebel, and it seems to capture enough detail. Once it's in the computer, though, leave JPG and "never return." BTW, it's useful to have duplicate or triplicate CDs of crucial images, and to replicate/replace them every year. You could also sign up for a Google mail acct and save up to 1 GB there by mailing to yourself ! Cheers, m. To love this comment, log in above July 21, 2004

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