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You philosophy on post-processing: How much, how little, why?


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#1
leighgion

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Back around when I was in college and Photoshop was only around v3.0, image editing was a cool, exciting frontier and I wanted to try everything. 

 

Fast forward 20+ years and now just about all I do to my RAW files is tweak white balance, manage the exposure and highlights a little and if really needed, crop. A part of my lizard brain scoffs at photos that I can see have gone through extensive post, no matter how good they look. 

 

I'm not sure that I'm actually happy with all my pics being mostly untouched or if it's just become a combination of inertia and laziness. Recently, with the free Nik plugins, I've tried to dabble with them but it's impossible for me to shake the sense that at that point I'm no longer doing photography and I'm just playing a kind of jumped up video game.

 

Am I being unreasonable? 



#2
dcbear78

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Meh.... People forget photography is art. How each person achieves their own desired outcome is completely up to the individual. Some people are purists and think photography must capture what is true to life. Some see it as a starting point to realizing their vision.

 

The more variety the better I say.

 

Life would get pretty boring if all I could see were 100% reproductions of real life. As too it would get tiresome to see 100% complete fantasy.

 

I like to play with a little from column A and a little from column B. 



#3
Merco_61

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My comfort zone for editing is things I could do in the wet darkroom. This includes most of the NIK plugins. I have dabbled a bit with HDR, but with these I try to get a natural look but with a wider range. The only real postprocessing trickery I use that wasn't available in the film days is focus stacking.

 

Then, of course, we have the Editing exercises and the music-inspired challenges where anything goes... They are fun, but more exercises in what can be done rather than pure photography.



#4
TBonz

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With my background being pretty much pure photojournalist, I tend to go the same route as Peter...pretty much what I used to be able to do in the darkroom.  Not to say I haven't cloned out a problem now and again, but that is pretty much it.  Since I shoot a good amount of sports, I did mess around with obviously manipulated images putting text and a background around an individual player...they are fairly popular and if you want to do them I am told you can make pretty good money...two examples (far from perfect) below that I did trying to learn how to do them...At least so far, I haven't decided to pursue that option...As I said, did them trying to learn and even though they aren't as good as they should be, the kid loved them...

 

ShaneSample.jpg

 

TheShooter.jpg

 

Other than something like that, it isn't "my thing" to perform significant manipulation but I do appreciate some of the images that I have seen with those mods.  But I would hate to see those images end up as the norm in areas other than just artistic.

 



#5
Wamason

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This probably due to my growing up in the digital age, where anyone can do post processing or image manipulation, but I tend to consider photography to be a combination of both shooting ability as well as post processing. Whatever works provided you get the end result in the context you want.

I would sum it up with this saying "to each his own". :)


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#6
etphoto

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Meh.... People forget photography is art. How each person achieves their own desired outcome is completely up to the individual. Some people are purists and think photography must capture what is true to life. Some see it as a starting point to realizing their vision.

The more variety the better I say.

Life would get pretty boring if all I could see were 100% reproductions of real life. As too it would get tiresome to see 100% complete fantasy.

I like to play with a little from column A and a little from column B.


Pretty much this ^^^.

I am in the camp of "true to life" and trying to get just about everything right in camera. I do clone and use healing brush but, just the basics. I think when you shoot for someone else a lot you have to do the "true to life" thing because what you consider "art" and cool looking someone else might not.

I also believe images can look over photoshoped or processed. Which, in my opinion, makes an image look really bad. My daughter, trying to learn photography, just got back from vacation and I was helping her process some of her images in LR. I must have used that term a few times "don't make it look over processed".

Excellent thread and discussion.

Twitter: @PhotographyET

#7
Malice

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How each person achieves their own desired outcome is completely up to the individual.

 

I absolutely agree with this.

 

At the same time, it's up to the individuals if they like what they're seeing or not. On the other hand, art isn't always about liking or not liking something.

 

So, in my opinion as an artistic field photography is very hard to grasp or interpret, if you will. Even more so, since everybody and their dog turned into a photographer in the digital area with smartphones having cameras built in.

 

Therefore, a lot depends on context and intentions.

 

If you want to do documentary style photography, you'll lean towards staying as close to the real thing as possible. If you want to express or convey an idea or concept, pure visual reality isn't so important.

 

Talking about expressing and/or conveying ideas/concepts. Another (good) reason to move away from the pure picture taken on the camera stems from the fact that cameras just don't perceive the world as human eyes do. This starts with the composition of an exposure and is still something to be considered in post processing. The brain (as our organ of perception) works a lot with comparisons against things already known, can auto-correct the 3D perspective, performs pattern recognition, prioritises some objects over others (faces or text, for example) and so on. This is enhanced by the abilities of our retinas to recognize and amplify contrasts of objects bordering one another. Lacking many of these higher image processing capabilities, cameras act much more neutral and record reality in a different way. The 2D rendering of reality (the exposure) will not necessarily spark the same brain-processing that the same piece of reality will, due to a lack of some of realities features (movement for example).

 

So, in other words, even if you want your photos to be as close to reality as possible, you have to "correct" for the way the spectators' brain will perceive this part of reality in the exposures. Essentially, translating those brain-processing functions back to reality is what led to the rules of composition.

 

Problem is, not everybody perceives everything in the same way. This is not only caused by biological differences between each individual but also by cultural differences between groups of people. Stuff like the preferred direction of reading text (left to right, right to left or top to down) have an impact on the most suitable composition in regard to the expected group of spectators of an image.

 

To sum up: every image has composition (good or bad) and every image needs processing (up to now, no human features a neural interface to work with the digital raw data of the camera sensor).

 

This leads me back to my initial "context and intention". Without being able to at least guess the context and the intentions behind taking an image in the first place and the way it was processed, makes it very difficult to get a handle on the quality of the image-generation-process as a whole.

 

This doesn't mean some things aren't obviously badly executed. We all know those guys dragging around very expensive gear and then take pictures in broad daylight of far away objects with the built-in flashes of their cameras, because for whatever reason the automatic mode decided to use it. In those cases it's hard to believe the use of the flash has anything to do with the intention of the photographer.

 

I.e. credibility is another issue. 

 

An image taken by a photojournalist in the middle of riot carries a different "weight" - even if it has technical flaws - than a picture taken at the same place two days prior without any people around. The same is true for known artists vs. unknown artists. It's very difficult to be neutral if the artist already has an acclaimed name. If that person does things the way he does, there has to be a good reason. If a nobody does the same thing, people are much more skeptical. Humans are just not objective.

 

In closing, this is indeed a very philosophical topic. I simply do (or try to do) whatever I personally think is the right way to get to the result I have in mind. If others like the results, good. If not, too bad, but not the end of the world. If I can learn from the feedback, even better.



#8
morticiaskeeper

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With my editing, it was all there in the RAW. Various bits may be brightened or darkened, but I would have done that in a darkroom, these days it's just easier.

My style tends to look towards impact, make the subject jump out, as if it was on a billboard.

Yesterday, I shot a Raspberry Pi Jam, the idea was to get crowd shots and show people enjoying themselves. Rather than spend a few hours editing down to about forty shots, I handed the jpg card over at the end of the day. Today, they published seventy seven shots, with no editing. Looking at them, I found them a bit dull, but looking at them in the context of the requirement, they did the job.

Ben Von Wong put a video up last week, answering the big question - what is the Von Wong preset that everybody wants. The answer was hard work, lots of editing, lots of imagination, lots of planning. When you see the final image, it's an art form, but still a pleasing image.

Getting an image that you, or your customer, is happy with, is the answer.

#9
Thumper

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I'd say do whatever you are comfortable with.  If you do photography as a hobby, then you are not out to please/satisfy anyone but yourself.  At least initially.   If you aren't comfortable with a certain level of editing, then don't do it.  When you look at your own work, you should be happy with it and comfortable with how you got it to where it is.  If you are happy with your results, then someone else coming up to you, looking at your work, and saying "It's undercooked" or "It's overcooked" should be regarded as someone else's opinion and not change how you feel about your work.  Even if it is someone whose opinion that you value.  It is all a matter of taste.  Just like with food.  Some people like certain kinds of food and are picky, other people like all kinds of food and appreciate the variety.  

 

Me personally, I do it all.  I'll barely edit some things, and other things will get outright butchered because I go so far overboard.  Since I am not doing this for a living and I don't have to answer to an employer or customers about how my photography looks, I have the luxury of being completely free with how I do my photography.  If I produce something that pleases me, I'll share it.  Some people may like it, and some people probably won't.  And that is great with me.  I started photography with film, at one point, I was processing my own film and prints in a wetlab darkroom.  But if you think that people weren't editing their work in a darkroom, sometimes heavily, then you'd be mistaken.  Especially with color photography.  I mainly did B&W on film, so most of my experience is there, and we did learn a lot of editing techniques in the wetlab darkroom.  I enjoyed color as well, but it was more involved (and expensive) compared to processing B&W.  With the advent of digital photography in the commercial and consumer markets, film has all but fallen in popularity.  Digital is much more convenient on many levels, and it is arguably cheaper to maintain.    (We could go into a really involved discussion on the two formats, which has probably been done to death over the years on many venues).  But with all of the different software platforms and applications available now, The ease and possibilities of processing and editing digital photographs is amazing.   

 

It's funny about the mindsets that we hold ourselves to with things like this.  In editing, I really don't hold myself to any rules, and I don't really adhere to anyone else's rules or comply with what other people think that I should be doing it in regards to my photography.  It is my photography, and I will do it as I please.  When I desire constructive criticism, I ask for it.  (Which is different than adhering to any sort of "rules".  I do try to be ever the student).  On my things, I don't do a huge amount of editing that takes the photo into a surreal appearance.  But sometimes, I do.   I depends on what I am looking for or looking to produce.  I love the technology.  But at the same time, I don't use a ton of the automated features on my camera.  I set my aperture, shutter speed, and ISO manually in almost every single shot.  I rarely use the program modes.  I use the autofocus most of the time (unless I am doing a focus stack or stitched panoramic or HDR sort of thing).  I use auto-white balance too, at least, most of the time, and at the camera level.  I will say that with the autofocus, there is the possibility of a lot going on there, depending on what I am shooting and in what mode.  (Action shots, etc).   But I do shoot most of my stuff in "Manual" mode, setting the aperture, ISO, and shutter speed myself.  Now, does that mean that I think that others that do use the program features of their cameras are "cheating" and not doing the photography themselves?  Of course not!  I could care less how other people produce their work.  All I want to see is their product.  I don't care how they got there (unless there is a particular technique/result that came up with that I would like to learn, and then I ask).  I love looking at peoples' photography.  I love seeing how other people capture moments in time and where they go with it and how they compose certain images and maybe take me somewhere or make me think.  I don't care how they got from A to B.  I just enjoy being there at the end and enjoying their work.  I apply that same mentality when I am holding  and using my own camera.  Once I embraced that freedom, it was like walking into a whole new world for me, and I enjoyed my photography so much more.  And in turn, I enjoyed other peoples' work even more.  

 

If you do have a desire to please other people with your work, just remember to make sure that you are happy with your work first.  Then share it.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* Remember also to filter input/critique/criticism/reviews from the internet.  It's the internet, and trolls dwell there.  Trolls that enjoy nothing more than simply upsetting people and causing conflict where none exists.  This little community is one of the best photography communities that I have found. The folks here will be honest with you on critiques and constructive criticism if you ask them to.  I like that.  I like that a lot.  I expect brutal honesty if I ask for constructive criticism.  It's how we grow and how we learn.  But on the net, we have to filter the true critique of our peers from the maliciousness of the trolls.  



#10
TBonz

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Well said Malice and Thumper!

 

I also enjoy looking at any type of photography.  Both of you brought up some excellent points.  I see some shots which are obviously very far from the original image...many of which that are, more than likely the combination of multiple images but I'm not talking about focus stacking or the like.  I'm talking about images in some cases that were photographically created - such as a landscape from one photo and a building / house / barn from another photo and a sky from yet another photo combined into one very impressive image.  I really enjoy looking at them and while I understand the techniques of creating them, would love to know what the photographer actually did to create the image.  Do I consider them photography?  Yes, but I think I kind of draw the line somewhere between the stacking types of shots and those shots - not that they aren't beautiful or amazing but that they are in a different "category" of images than what folks would consider a traditional photograph.

 

I remember an image that Peter posted where his description indicated there was roughly one day a year where he could get that particular angle of (I think it was) the sun...he waited years as I remember to get the image that he posted here in the Forums...I expect he didn't publish it SOOC, but he did create it from a single image.  To me those two are both impressive and I would not dare to suggest which is more impressive, but I also don't believe that both should be in the same category if that makes sense.  Each takes a certain mindset, along with talent and determination to achieve the photographic goal.

 

I'm not sure how to define the categories or how many categories there should be, but I would love it if at some point in the future those categories existed and folks identified their images as such...One of the great things about these Forums is that folks are willing to share how their final images are created.



#11
Merco_61

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Tom, was it this one you meant?

"What are they talking about"? - Photographic Technique - NikonForums.com

That image is a Cibachrome print made from a slide with the only tweaks after the capture being the filtration and exposure in the enlarger. The repro to digital is made under controlled lighting and SOOC.

 

The light is right about 4 mornings every year to produce what I captured that morning.



#12
cooltouch

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I'm kinda new here, but not new to post processing images. I started out, really, with slides and some C-41 and a scanner and Paint Shop Pro software and moved on from there. But one thing that I've tried to stay true to from the beginning was attempting to make the image look like what I see it in my mind's eye, if you will. In other words, I will manipulate an image such that it appears to be as close to real life as I can get it to look. Now, with the very narrow exposure latitude of slides, this often presented -- and presents because I still shoot slides and other film emulsions -- a real challenge, and one that can often only be only partially realized. I've developed a few techniques. Sometimes  they work better than others.

 

An interesting thing I've always felt about digital images is how they are similar in many ways to slide exposures. Mostly a narrower exposure latitude than found in C-41, for example. This has caused me to bias my digital exposures somewhat toward the minus EV, which I also found helpful to a certain extent with slides. The reasons are simple. There's usually always a considerable amount of information that can be extracted from the shadows, but on the other end of the spectrum, once things go to white, that's it. There is no more information to be had. But the technique lies in how best to extract the information from the shadows while maintaining an overall realistic looking bias.

 

These days, I really like using Photoshop's raw image converter for much of my PP work. I've found that it is so effective that often, after I'm finished with it, there's little else I need to do with an image after it's been converted besides save it to an image file.  After a brief amazement over HDR, and quicky growing weary of its often overprocessed look, I discovered a very real value to it, which involves bringing out the shadow details in an image without overly distorting the overall quality of an image. To me, that's the real value of HDR.

 

I know a lot of folks swear by Lightroom, often touting their "impoved workflow," but I've never gotten the hang of it, I prefer Photoshop -- and, yes, I still use Paint Shop Pro. It has features that I use on a regular basis that Photoshop doesn't have. Plus, I've used it for so long that I can usually finish processing an image faster than I can with Photoshop. Its raw image converter isn't in the same league as Photoshop's though.

 



#13
TBonz

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Peter, yup, that's the one...just an amazing image to me...



#14
M.Beier

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Personally I do none...

I spend the time trying to improve my technique and gain experience.... I barely have time to sort, heck im still behind a few thousand shots... So far I just enjoy to see how my 'gut feeling' of shutterspeed, exposure compensation and aperture becomes more spot on, and also my sense on which focus option to select...

I'm still at the very basic level, despite I am gear-hungry.... I am seriously considering SIGMA 50mm ART 1.4, despite most of the pictures I submit are even from the JPG files (which is close to criminal when using D800E*)

 

When I get further, I'll edit only the natural:
PS for lens correction...

Highlighting objects a bit more - often the shadows can be a nightmare when shooting things in the sky, be it birds or planes...

There is no wrong, no right - its all a matter of style..

 

*It is wrong using JPG with this cam though... Despite sites such as Reuters won't accept none original JPEG anymore^



#15
Malice

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There's another thing I'd like to add:

 

Personally, I (try to) draw the line when the processing starts to turn into "Effekthascherei". I'm using the german expression here, because what the dictionary tells me doesn't really cover what I mean.

 

"Effekthascherei" - among other things - means that you add effects (or do stuff) just for the "Wow effect". A bit like showing off and also a bit like what stage magicians do to distract the audience from what is really going on. It can also be used as a description of movies, which have great special effects but no depth or story or anything original. So it's shiny on the outside, but doesn't really give you anything or is not likely to mean anything to you, once you get past the most superficial level.

 

For example many HDR images make that impression on me. In the first second I think "wow, that's radical" and a few moments later it just appears to be overdone or in the context of this thread over-processed.

 

Since this goes against my personal taste that's what I'm trying to steer away from.

 

Moving the exposure in the direction I had in mind, when I was taking the picture: yes. Emphasize what is important and reduce what is not important for me: yes. Producing a bigger and bigger bang: rather not.

 

To add to the perception topic above: there's another thing which distorts our perception. Our own skill-level regarding a topic. If you can quickly recognize how much effort and dedication has gone into generating any kind of product, the appreciation of said effort and dedication will make an impression on the perception of the product.

 

To give a "real world" example: if you know from your own experience how difficult it is to perform a specific snowboarding/skateboarding/in-line skating/BMX riding/surfing/Motorcross/water diving/gymnastics/whatever stunt and see it performed to perfection -  which in this case means it looks totally effortless - your appreciation of the feat is most likely to be much higher compared to those people who have no personal experience with the activity whatsoever.

 

(Don't trust you brain. It lives in its own reality.)

 

I.e. there is no right amount of post-processing. There are just too many variables. To stick with the example above: the stage magician absolutely has to dazzle and distract the audience. But that's not something most of us want to see all the time in every circumstance.



#16
cooltouch

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Reading M.Beier's comments got me to thinking. And its an aspect of post processing that we probably don't think about until it's darkly upon us. Namely the storage of lossless files that can quickly get completely out of hand.

 

The digital camera I use most often now is a Sony NEX 7 (I'm a Nikon film guy). Tne NEX 7 is a bit long in the tooth nowadays, but its 24.3 megapixels of resolution isn't. Now, if you've got an 800-series, or a Sony A7r (or rII) or one of those 50mp Canon wonders, then you've got problems even more pressing than mine.

 

An average raw file taken by my NEX 7 is roughly 25 megabytes in size. If I convet it to a jpg -- which M.Beier says should never be done -- it is a little over 3 MB in size. But if I decide to save it to either a .tif or a lossless .png, then the file jumps to over 70 MB in size. A bit of rough figurin' tells me that a 36mp camera, like the D800-series, or the Sony A7r, produces lossless files, like .tif for example, that are over 105 MB in size. Less than 10 per gigabyte. Hooboy.

 

So, how many hard drives have you filled up with image files?  When did you give up burning DVDs because it was too time consuming?  Heck, I've been thinking about just getting new memory cards as I fill them up, rather than transferring the raw files to my hard drive so I can wipe it clean and start over. They're cheap enough now. Why, just today, I got a coupon in the mail for a free 32 gig memory card from MicroCenter. I wonder what the archivall properties of memory cards are like . . .

 

So anyway, a while back, I did a comparison between a tif file and a jpg of the same image and I saw very little difference between the two. Yes there were differences, but at normal viewing sizes, they are indistinguishable.  So I stopped saving all my files to tif or png. I leave them as raw on the card and only convert those that I need -- or want -- for posting on the Web or printing, etc. And I convert only to jpg now. By the way, I have sold jpgs to publishers before. That was the file format they preferred, in fact. Fine with me. Who was I to argue?

 



#17
TBonz

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Many of the pro sports photographers only shoot in JPEG.  Typically that is what they will upload anyway regardless of whether they were processing from RAW or JPEG.  The problem is not storing JPEG - the problem is a copy of a copy of a copy...of a JPEG where you can get degradation over time.  I store my RAW images and any JPEGS I choose to generate from them on external hard drives (minimum of 2 and frequently on more than 2).  I have heard folks say that the cards are not a good choice for long term storage, but I haven't gone out to investigate it...



#18
esrandall

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Lots of great viewpoints here.

 

Personally, I lasted about a week trying to be a "get it right in the camera" guy.  I would make lots of exposure mistakes, learned how to "fix" them in LR, and in turn let that translate into better shooting technique.  I didn't have the background that a lot of you have, so my learning to shoot ran right alongside my learning how to use post applications.  I do a lot better with exposure now, and will always use LR for cropping (because I love experimenting with different angles, widths, etc.), and honestly, I probably try a vignette or blur on 75% of what I shoot.  I'm not out to impress anyone but myself, so I play with an image until it looks good to me, and then I move on.  I have a couple of Topaz plugins (Adjust and B&W Effects II), as well as the NIC plugins.  I'll make a few tweaks on an image, and something will "tell" me to see what a B&W conversion looks like.  Sometimes I keep it, sometimes I don't.  I'm probably 70/30 photographer/artsy guy.



#19
M.Beier

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Reading M.Beier's comments got me to thinking. And its an aspect of post processing that we probably don't think about until it's darkly upon us. Namely the storage of lossless files that can quickly get completely out of hand.

 

The digital camera I use most often now is a Sony NEX 7 (I'm a Nikon film guy). Tne NEX 7 is a bit long in the tooth nowadays, but its 24.3 megapixels of resolution isn't. Now, if you've got an 800-series, or a Sony A7r (or rII) or one of those 50mp Canon wonders, then you've got problems even more pressing than mine.

 

An average raw file taken by my NEX 7 is roughly 25 megabytes in size. If I convet it to a jpg -- which M.Beier says should never be done -- it is a little over 3 MB in size. But if I decide to save it to either a .tif or a lossless .png, then the file jumps to over 70 MB in size. A bit of rough figurin' tells me that a 36mp camera, like the D800-series, or the Sony A7r, produces lossless files, like .tif for example, that are over 105 MB in size. Less than 10 per gigabyte. Hooboy.

 

So, how many hard drives have you filled up with image files?  When did you give up burning DVDs because it was too time consuming?  Heck, I've been thinking about just getting new memory cards as I fill them up, rather than transferring the raw files to my hard drive so I can wipe it clean and start over. They're cheap enough now. Why, just today, I got a coupon in the mail for a free 32 gig memory card from MicroCenter. I wonder what the archivall properties of memory cards are like . . .

 

So anyway, a while back, I did a comparison between a tif file and a jpg of the same image and I saw very little difference between the two. Yes there were differences, but at normal viewing sizes, they are indistinguishable.  So I stopped saving all my files to tif or png. I leave them as raw on the card and only convert those that I need -- or want -- for posting on the Web or printing, etc. And I convert only to jpg now. By the way, I have sold jpgs to publishers before. That was the file format they preferred, in fact. Fine with me. Who was I to argue?

Yes the files become nuts, no doubt.

 

Personally, before I started I was running 4x2TB ~6TB storage.... Then I swapped to a 8TB USB3 HDD, and now, I am slowly on the way to change to 4x6TB ~18TB

Not only pictures, but yes, they do occupy a great deal.

Many of the pro sports photographers only shoot in JPEG.  Typically that is what they will upload anyway regardless of whether they were processing from RAW or JPEG.  The problem is not storing JPEG - the problem is a copy of a copy of a copy...of a JPEG where you can get degradation over time.  I store my RAW images and any JPEGS I choose to generate from them on external hard drives (minimum of 2 and frequently on more than 2).  I have heard folks say that the cards are not a good choice for long term storage, but I haven't gone out to investigate it...

Copy of a copy of a copy.... Shouldnt impact the picture?



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Merco_61

Merco_61

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Copy of a copy of a copy.... Shouldnt impact the picture?

The problem with .jpg and other lossy formats is that it recompresses every time you save it. This leads to visible posterization after remarkably few iterations. If you use LR, this is no problem as the changes during editing is made to the recipe in the database and not written to file until export but if you want to save snapshots during editing in conventional editors, .jpg is the wrong format.