[Leica] Drowning in digital files

[Bill at photobynelsch.com (Bill )]

I have two 250 gig Maxtor stand-alone external hard drives that plug into 
the USB ports on my laptop.  I move the RAW files to one
of the hard drives and 'processed' photos are saved to the other.  I can 
usually keep only a couple of months worth of photography
on my laptop so the move process is a regular occurrence. So far so good.  
 
Bill in Denver  

-----Original Message-----
From: lug-bounces+bill=photobynelsch.com@leica-users.org 
[mailto:lug-bounces+bill=photobynelsch.com@leica-users.org] On Behalf Of
Peter Klein
Sent: Monday, January 22, 2007 12:12 AM
To: lug@leica-users.org
Subject: [Leica] Drowning in digital files

I'm a bit of a squirrel.  I rarely throw anything away unless forced to.  
Then once in a while, reluctantly, I do a big cleanup.  As
with life, so with computers.  I have files on my computer that date back to 
1983, the year I started working with PCs, plus some
converted CP/M files from even
earlier(!)  This has not been much of a problem--most of it has been text, 
and the size of the hard drive on the new computer I buy
is always bigger than the old one.  So I never hit the ceiling.

Until now.  Enter digital photography, where one TIFF is the size of my 
entire hard drive 10 years ago!!  A 16-bit TIFF of a scanned
frame of color film is about 125 megs.  An E-1 RAW file is 10 megs, and a 
16-bit work TIFF is 28 megs.  B&W films scans are 40 megs.
It adds up.

My hard drive is nearly filled with RAW files, scanned TIFFs and 
intermediate work TIFFs.  I was embarking on a ruthless rampage
through the directories, meaning to get rid of lots of digital flotsam and 
jetsam. Then I found a keeper RAW file I hadn't noticed
before (see "Found on my hard drive").  And this gave me pause.

Problem is, I end up with a lot of unneeded junk on my drive, but it's hard 
to decide what's needed and what's not.   I'd be interested in how other 
LUGgers cope with this--what do you keep? What do you throw away? How do you 
decide?

My inclination is to keep:

1. RAW file or the original scan.
2. Final version, unsharpened (8-bit TIFF, PNG, or high-quality JPG) 3. 
Reduced JPG for Web.

But with film, sometimes it seems to make more sense to keep the spotted 
version of the original, or even the 8-bit version after
the curves are right.  It depends on the image.  Sometimes I save several 
version, decide on one, then come back and use another
curve or cropping later.  Or I don't spot until I decide the image is worth 
working furthre.  That's where it gets confusing.

Add to that, what format do you keep your final files in?  I used to think 
TIFF was the only way to go, but I'm now wondering if PNG
might be better (lossless compression, often 30% smaller than an 8-bit 
TIFF).  And I've read that some people keep a very
high-quality JPG--and I must say, with my
E-1 DSLR photos, I usually don't notice a difference between TIFF and such a 
JPG.

I'm also wondering whether it's worth it to go through years of files and 
delete intermediate files, or just buy a bigger disk and
try to streamline my future workflow to leave fewer files in the first 
place.  Or buy a DVD burner--but I'm concerned about the
longevity of any home-burned optical media.  A big hard drive or two, plus a 
matching external for backup seems better.

Note that I use Picture Window Pro, not Photoshop, so I end up saving 
several different files at various stages of editing, rather
than having layers in one humongous file.  Then again, I don't need a 
gamer's PC with 2 gigs of RAM just to get by.

--Peter


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