file format saving

[AMS]

great discussion.

cheers bears pics

[kiwi]

Let's bump this thread in 10 years

[arthurking83]

Let's bump this thread in 10 years

why not do that now! ....

JPEG!

[Speedway]

95% of my shots are JPEG and I haven't seen any reason to change. I have on occasions used raw and after a lot more work I cannot see any difference in prints from raw/tif file or JPEG.
Cheers
Keith.

[ricktas]

The issue is one that we could discuss for years. The problem as I see it is that companies come and go. Look around, how many companies that existed on 1900 are still around in 2014? Even once great companies can end up basically non-existent (look at Kodak). So any of these formats rely on Canon/Nikon/Pentax/Adobe etc to be around forever. Even Apple and its proprietary music formats.

And we are also working on the assumption that RAW formats are the best way of capturing our image data. What if someone comes up with a whole new and better sensor tech next year, but this new tech means a complete change to what we see as RAW at present? We are very bold to be proclaiming that RAW will be the way of the future, in any format, when we are so early on in the digital age.

All any of us can do is what we think will be the best for us. Even if there was a perfect workflow as regards to image types, it could well be that everything we do today is obsolete and not available in 2030.

VHS and Beta wars anyone? And look where both those formats are today.

[ricktas]

The issue is one that we could discuss for years. The problem as I see it is that companies come and go. Look around, how many companies that existed on 1900 are still around in 2014? Even once great companies can end up basically non-existent (look at Kodak). So any of these formats rely on Canon/Nikon/Pentax/Adobe etc to be around forever. Even Apple and its proprietary music formats.

And we are also working on the assumption that RAW formats are the best way of capturing our image data. What if someone comes up with a whole new and better sensor tech next year, but this new tech means a complete change to what we see as RAW at present? We are very bold to be proclaiming that RAW will be the way of the future, in any format, when we are so early on in the digital age.

All any of us can do is what we think will be the best for us. Even if there was a perfect workflow as regards to image types, it could well be that everything we do today is obsolete and not available in 2030.

VHS and Beta wars anyone? And look where both those formats are today.

[MrQ]

I feel that we've had this discussion recently. As Rick points out: any of the file formats are just arbitrary choices - they each rely on continued support for continued existence. I think it's fairly safe to assume that all the major formats (DNG/RAW, jpeg, tiff, psd, etc.) will all be around for a quite a while and won't just vanish overnight. All the formats have such huge user bases that even if one of the companies went out of business we'd still see something from third parties, even if it was just software to convert to one of the remaining formats.

So to the OP:
- your camera's raw format is the best format for capture
- if you're only using Adobe software then convert to DNG when you import, otherwise stay with your camera's format
- if you're doing photo manipulation (beyond basic adjustments) then TIFF or PSD (depending on what software you use)
- export to whatever format is required (JPEG for web, etc.)

The main things to remember are:
- some of the formats lose quality and continue to lose quality each time you edit and save (I'm looking at you JPEG ).
- Raw files (including DNG) tend not to be edited directly. Most software that edits these save a series of edit instructions that get applied to make the final image (called non-destructive editing). This means you can usually step back through the process to restore the image to a previous point.
- Lossless formats (TIFF, PSD) let you edit like crazy and retain image quality.

[AMS]

Thanks