Best solution for storing Raw files

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Dazler

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Name
Darren
Edit My Images
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Hi all.

Please can you recommend the best solution for me to use.

At the moment I am storing all Raw files in my windows 10 photo library but as I am fairly new to photography I tend to take about 100 pics a week edit in Lightroom and delete the rejects from disk and my keep pics stored in Lightroom.

Any way what I want is to just be saving my edited jpegs to the PC.

So the best solution for my needs would be great. And do I need to keep the Raws. Would this effect lightroom?

Thanks in advance Darren
 
There's a lot to think about. But number one - if you store any pics in just one place, you can lose them all through equipment failure (happens alot) or human error (that happens too). So a backup strategy might be wise. Which could be the cloud, or external drives.

Whether to keep the raws is a personal choice. If you keep them, their edits can be re-done, just as in the darkroom you might've printed differently (made different decisions at different times). But as you've said you do, keep on top of deleting all the rejects, otherwise the number of images (and the storage space required) will build up horrendously.
 
If space is an issue, and you are certain you only want a jpeg copy, you can export from lightroom as jpeg and then bin the originals. Its not something i do, especially with the relatively low cost of big storage drives these days. As long as you are strict with your 'keepers' and bin the rest, your RAW files are the best to keep.
 
I keep all my raw files. Well, just about all of them (probably 99%).

When I started with digital photography and learned about the value of raw files I made an effort to keep them and back them up too. In Lightroom, I have kept most of the dng files too and export my files from there to jpegs. Things have changed over the last 2-3 years for me and I have had two computer crashes and lost much of the Lightroom work.

What has saved me is the raw files - I just re-edit them, and with more experience and knowledge - and the Nik Software - I probably (hopefully!) edit them better than I used to.

Just like keeping negatives in the old days. (Except we chucked ours out before they invented those converters from negatives to digital ...:mad: ) - but although that's a different story it's another reason for keeping the raw files :)
 
I have a external hard drive and i back up with Google photo which is free.
 
If space is an issue, try to keep only the best shots and discard the rest.

However personally I would never throw away the RAW files of the shots that I wanted to keep. I have some JPEG-only shots I made in New Zealand with a Canon 300D that are slightly underexposed. At the time I didn't know much about RAW and didn't have much card space so I shot everything in JPEG. When I try to correct the exposure of these files the image quality really suffers. Had I shot in RAW format this would probably be an easy edit in Lightroom with minimal loss of quality.
 
Thanks, I am probably thinking of saving my Raw files to some kind of portable hard drive so not to slow down my PC and just keep my adjusted jpegs on pc
Best of both worlds.

Just going to look on EBay for about a 1TB hard drive.

If you have a recommendation please let me know.

Thanks again for your feedback.

Darren
 
Samsung (Seagate?) External drives from Amazon have served me well. Last two have been 2Tb drives and have been in daily use for about a year but are nearly full now.
 
Dazler said:
keep pics stored in Lightroom
Click to expand...

Also, be aware that Lightroom isn't a storing mechanism. Lightroom is an index (or database) of where the photos are stored and what edits you've made to them. Search for something with .lrcat as a suffix on your computer. This is the Lightroom database (index)

The only time to convert photos to jpegs and discard everything else is if storage is a problem. For me - I'd rather buy more storage than compress all my raw (digital negatives) files down to jpeg (kinda like a print - harder to go back from).

All good advice above. But when considering backups - also consider backing up your Lightroom catalogue - otherwise all the indexing, rating, keywording, and non-destructive edits will be lost if the cat becomes corrupt/lost.
 
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