Archiving Digital Photography (Part 5.2) (Saving Photos & File Formats)

Continued from yesterday's entry (Part 5)

A good solution for the job: JPEG

One of the most recognized and most universally accepted formats for photography the .jpg or JPEG file format. (Pronounced Jay-Peg) It is supported in web browsers and most image viewing applications and it's a great solution for storing images because of its ability to compress an image and still look great. The JPEG format is very widely used and accepted so it should be considered as an important part of your archive solution.

That said, there are some major drawbacks that we need to point out. First off JPEG files use “lossy” compression. Now, read the word carefully. I said “lossy” not “lousy”. “Lossy” means that every time you save your image you loose some data and the image degrades. Even if you save your image at 100% quality you are still losing infomation because of this compression. Another issue to keep in mind is the fact that every time you edit your image and save it again you are losing more quality. So as an archiving solution JPEG files should not be your first choice but a solution for easily and quickly viewing your final images. At the very least you need to keep an original JPEG file as a master and save files from the master each time you make edits. I would suggest investigating other “non-lossless” formats for archiving your original image files though and always working from those files when editing your image if possible. Then once you are happy with the final image, save another version as a compressed JPEG for quick reference and viewing later.

The new JPEG 2000 format is gaining popularity and it promises higher quality images but it is still “lossy” and will not retain all the original image information. Not to complicate things further but to clarify a common rummor, there is actually a “lossless” JPEG format but it doesn't compress nearly as well as the standard baseline JPEG format. Currently the “lossless” JPEG is a good example of an extinct file format because it is no longer supported by most major applications. There is also another new version called JPEG-LS which is also a lossless format but your guess is as good as mine if this format will ever catch on with the masses. Standard baseline JPEG is a wonderful format to work with when the job is right but as a pure archive format you should consider something lossless.

The RAW format: Highest quality, smallest size, but risky.

Another popular option is the RAW format. The RAW format is popular because it's the closest you will get to a digital negative. It is simply the data that comes straight from your CDD. (Charged Coupled Device—One of the two main types of image sensors used in digital cameras) The advantage of this format is that the image can be saved in a lossless format that is considerably smaller in file size than TIFF (discussed next) which is important to some people but the main reason photographers choose this format is that the image has not been processed or modified by the camera settings in any way. You are starting with the raw data that the camera collected when you tripped the shutter. In my opinion there are some good points to using RAW as an arhive format but there is one main drawback and it is a big one. You can’t open this format with a normal photo program. You need to use what is called an “acquire module” that allows you to access the file via a plug-in for your software. The most common used module is TWAIN which installs into your image editor and brings the image into your software.

Article Author: Christopher Auman

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