Cropping?

[lazer chikkin]

That's it indeed, awp/hollis_f are absolutely right in my explanation. All that gets stored is a description of the edit rather than the edit itself. Very useful for different 'projects' like an online album, or granny's 6x4 snaps, or optimised for HD TV etc, or a b/w series. At virtually no additional cost of space.

Ooh that's pretty clever, just storing the metadata for the changes, rather than a new full version of the image. I saw something similar for medical data (x-rays, scans) about 10 years ago and it was pretty complex, it's good that it's made it down to consumers.

 

[vtecsilver]

All RAW photos saved uncropped, treated like negatives. But then almost all my photos get cropped in post production, the final shape being determined by the actual photo, and what the final photo is going to be used for. Cropping is also useful for "zooming" in closer when the original lens wasn't long enough.

Additionally if you make a panoramic photo by stitching several photos toghether you will have to crop all the photos at least a little!!