Archiving your digital photographs

[Liquid101]

To get the best from your camera, you should be using the RAW format. However, as camera technology changes, so does the native RAW derivative that your camera manufacturer uses. Each manufacturer use it's own proprietary version of RAW - not very helpful when you consider the long term digital preservation of your precious photo archive.

Most of us also go to reasonable lengths to backup our data safely, but do we consider the file formats themselves? Many people make an uncompressed TIFF version of their processed images, but leave the RAW file in it's proprietary format. Risky. This method relies on software manufacturers always supporting the various versions of each manufacturers RAW format.

For some time, Adobe has been pushing it's DNG format. An open, and fully featured RAW file which is hoping to address the digital preservation issues surrounding the format. The Library of Congress suggest DNG s the only sustainable RAW format - trust me, they know their stuff.

Adobe offer their DNG convertor for free, here

So, convert your CR2's and NEF's to DNG now - you know it makes sense.

[cedmondson]

Originally Posted by Liquid101

To get the best from your camera, you should be using the RAW format. However, as camera technology changes, so does the native RAW derivative that your camera manufacturer uses. Each manufacturer use it's own proprietary version of RAW - not very helpful when you consider the long term digital preservation of your precious photo archive.

Most of us also go to reasonable lengths to backup our data safely, but do we consider the file formats themselves? Many people make an uncompressed TIFF version of their processed images, but leave the RAW file in it's proprietary format. Risky. This method relies on software manufacturers always supporting the various versions of each manufacturers RAW format.

For some time, Adobe has been pushing it's DNG format. An open, and fully featured RAW file which is hoping to address the digital preservation issues surrounding the format. The Library of Congress suggest DNG s the only sustainable RAW format - trust me, they know their stuff.

Adobe offer their DNG convertor for free, here

So, convert your CR2's and NEF's to DNG now - you know it makes sense.

Your logic makes a lot of sense & I've considered going DNG on more than one occasion - but how 'open' is a standard that appears to be promoted by a single company with a dominant market position? What if (for example) Google bought Adobe and had no particular interest in keeping the DNG idea going? I'm willing to be convinced that it is a good idea but suspicious at the same time...

[lightpainter]

Does that mean we will be doubling up on all our files, or can you delete the CR2 RAW files?
What happens to the Lightroom album that is stored in RAW?

[springtide]

Interesting articles and discussions on OpenRAW's website about RAW and DNG:

OpenRAW | Digital Image Preservation Through Open Documentation
Articles | OpenRAW

Not a lot of activity has occurred on OpenRAW's site for ages, so assume the movement is not very active now and most people have accepted that the 'open standard' for RAW will be DNG, even though (I think) it's still a 'proprietary RAW format'.

Thanks for the info Liquid on 'Library of Congress', as it backs up my choice of converting my old RAW's to DNG I made a couple of years ago.
I keep all my files in vendor RAW until I upgrade my camera, and convert to DNG once I've moved to the new body.

Interesting point about Lightroom. I've very interested in knowing how standard RAWs can be converted and still keep the catalogue info (and also how others intend to handle this)

Cheers