How long do you keep your raw files for?

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Luke_

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Luke
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After processing your images from RAW to jpeg/other format, how long do you then keep your RAW image files for?

After a few months Im up to 9GB of RAW files, I would like to keep them, for times when my processing skills get better and I can go an improve older images.

But I was just curious as to how long you all kept your RAW files for.
 
Keep 'em forever hopefully. I keep all mine and have them backed up on 3 separate drives - storage is pretty cheap these days.

You summed up the reason for keeping them yourself - you can always go back to that RAW file and start with a blank sheet.
 
I've only just started with raw but I thought they were supposed to be like negatives, so surely you keep them forever, that's my intention.

Whether or not I ever get around to processing them is another question.
 
For any shot that I'm happy with and decide to keep, I ALWAYS keep the RAW file too. There can be a multitude of reasons for wanting to return to it at a later date :)
 
CT said:
Keep 'em forever hopefully. I keep all mine and have them backed up on 3 separate drives - storage is pretty cheap these days.

You summed up the reason for keeping them yourself - you can always go back to that RAW file and start with a blank sheet.
Click to expand...

:plusone:
 
Yeah forever, although keeping 3 terabytes mirrored with an off-site backup isn't still can't be classed as 'cheap'! lol
 
I just keep them all, although I'm starting to realise how much memory they are taking on both my HD and my back up, so I'm going to retire them to DVD and scrub my drives I think.
 
Some less than 5 seconds, others I have on a couple of hard drives.

I download to the laptop and save the best (for me) to the external hard drives. After a few months I go through the most recent ones on the laptop and cull them again, backup to externals anything not already there.

If I saved everything there would be a hell of a lot of rubbish taking up disk space!
 
Pippy_Neville said:
I just keep them all, although I'm starting to realise how much memory they are taking on both my HD and my back up, so I'm going to retire them to DVD and scrub my drives I think.
Click to expand...

Never rely solely on an optical backup.CD/DVD media will not last indefinitely.
If you want to keep them then have at least 2 backups 1 of which could be DVD if the other is HDD. check them periodically to ensure the data is still readable.
 
I decided long ago that I'll never be that good with photoshop and that I can't polish a turd into a diamond. Therefore I'm absolutely brutal with deleting things I don't like at their first appearance. Keeping clutter is not good even if it is cheap.
 
Kev M said:
I decided long ago that I'll never be that good with photoshop and that I can't polish a turd into a diamond. Therefore I'm absolutely brutal with deleting things I don't like at their first appearance. Keeping clutter is not good even if it is cheap.
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:plusone:

Which just goes to show, there's no hard and fast rule. :rules:
 
Well storage is ever getting cheaper and offsite backup can be a cheap as a couple drives left at the parents/siblings...

Generally I throw a copy of everything I take on to an external drive which I take relaxed backups off. Life changing events can sometime reclassify crappy pictures into sentimental keepers...

I then really only keep proper copies/backups/off site backups of stuff I deem as fairly good..
 
For ever - even the crap/blurred motion ones (never know what future technology will provide ...)
 
Forever here too. I keep archives of places I’ve been, seen etc .. as well as the nice ones. I trim, but keep random records of all stuff overall, But its not worth throwing away perfectly acceptable images just for the sake of storage anymore.

kalibre said:
Yeah forever, although keeping 3 terabytes mirrored with an off-site backup isn't still can't be classed as 'cheap'! lol
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:lol:

Still, just imagine if they where negs ...let alone actual prints :eek:

...imagines warehouse scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
 
Kev M said:
I decided long ago that I'll never be that good with photoshop and that I can't polish a turd into a diamond. Therefore I'm absolutely brutal with deleting things I don't like at their first appearance. Keeping clutter is not good even if it is cheap.
Click to expand...

Absolutely agree, anything technically wrong it gets deleted, if I just don't like the shot it gets deleted, if it's too much like the frames surrounding it then I 'll pick the best one or two and delete the rest. Once they're down to a manageable amount they're archived off. I never delete raw files beyond this point though.
 
Forever, God knows how many Gb's I have.
 
A someposted above...you never know what ones you might suddly want to keep later on, for example ive a few dodgy ones of my parents..but now my dads lying in a hostital ward with terminal cancer, suddinly..there just a momory or me n him messing about with my old A100 when i first got it from new york..
Sorry for the mobidness there :)
 
Don't apologise civicboy. It is an extreme example as to why people don't delete files, mine is that my nephew is changing daily it seems, and so those photos of him as a newborn, even though not technically good, are something to look back on.

I have all my RAWs backed up on 2 DVDs (not a permanent solution, but I swap them onto new discs every 6-12 months), one of which is stored off site. They're also on an external HD, and will soon be a second one.
 
Only keep the good raws, any pants ones get deleted. Got nearly 60gb of jpegs so keeping the same in raw would be an obscene amount of gbs
 
I keep everything I have taken digitally, which is only RAW files now. I've just had a look, and that is approaching 250Gb. :eek: :lol:

Technology advances, and hopefully my post processing skills improve so some images may be recoverable. There are 90 - 95% (maybe even more :(:lol:) that are totally rubbish though, but they are memories of events and what I did wrong. ;)

Memory is cheap, and cheap enough to make sure you images are backed up too. ;) :lol:
 
All of them, for ever...
Currently running 2x 1tb drives (the main backed-up archive); 2x 500Gb drives (working and primary back-up); 1x 400Gb drive (current military work) and 1x 250Gb drive (music and film clips)...

1Tb LaCie drives are now £60 on Amazon...£60!!! hahaha
 
I keep my RAW files forever, I've got around 9,000 so far.

The RAW processing software is getting better all the time, so sometimes I go back to old files and re-process them. If you only have the JPEGs, you can't.
 
Rubbish raws go straight away, the out of focus etc.
Everything else gets kept. I've recently revisited some old shots from 3 years ago having learnt new skills in PP.
 
I haven't really thought about this very much. Memory is reasonably cheap now, and I just dump all the files onto a big internal HHD, and back them up to an external one when I remember. Pretty random, and the drives are cluttered with duplicates and so on. I'm not that emotional about photographs and i really should clean them up and get rid of the dross.

I've also just used Windows folder trees for the images, which was fine at first but it's getting a bit out of hand now. Any suggestions for organising software (not Lightroom, I can't afford it)?
 
until they go bad

(b, dum tish!)

tough crowd
 
I store them all , even the ones I think are rubbish at the time
 
I import them into Lightroom as a DNG file then I delete them.
 
When I put a load of raws on my pc, obviously they're in dated folders. I do a quick size reduction (75% usually) batch process on all of them so I can nip through the jpgs and quickly choose the keepsies. Then I delete the rubbish ones and start on individual processing of each raw.
 
Does everyone shoot in lossless compressed RAW?
 
Forever, as I type this I'm looking at 6 external drives, and thats just a bit of it, a typical wedding might generate 10-30 GB of raw images (depending on wedding) that has to be backed up at least twice (I prefere more) then theres the editied jpegs, another 5-6 GB maybe, then the album images etc etc, it soon mounts up.
A terrabyte is nothing these days, I have 160 gb of music for my mp3 lol.
 
swanseamale47 said:
a typical wedding might generate 10-30 GB of raw images (depending on wedding)
Click to expand...

How many shots do you take at a wedding? Do you shoot lossless compressed RAW? That does seem like rather a lot.
 
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