Try zipping a 16 bit TIFF and you’ll most likely end up with a larger file, not smaller 🙁
But look on the bright side: HD space is so cheap these days, why even worry about compressing your precious image files?
Chris, it isnt so much the hard drive space as well as the archiving on DVD/cd space, even with my double layer DVD drive maxing out at 8gb, most of my images after editing are ending up (non compressed) around 300-400mb so thats only 25 or so images per DVD, only 1 or 2 if I use a standard CD at 800mb.
most of my images after editing are ending up (non compressed) around 300-400mb so thats only 25 or so images per DVD
At 1$ per DVD, that’s 4 cents per image.cheap storage if you ask me.
Its not a cost issue at all, more of "its a pain to have only a few images on one disk" issue.
I flatten all my layers when finished for archiving and then i save the dng file right next to the worked version for future reworking if needed. maybe not the best way,but i am comfortable doing it that way.
What I do is save all my non-rejected camera files to CD’s (if a CD dies I lose 700 MB, If a DVD dies I lose 4.7 GB)
I mirror the CD’s (second copy) to another address (my girlfriend’s). That keeps the images if my office catches fire. (offices sometimes do that)
After having worked on the selects I save them to external HDD storage (production files), and keep them there until the client selection/chewing over/final decision is done.
Well after that I save the flattened versions to another mirrored CD set, and that’s it!
I’m never afraid that I might have to do the edits again in a different way, but if that does happen in the future, I’m bound to have my skill improved and I’ll probably have better software.
Rob
Alternativly External hdd’s are very cheep these days. That would be a good option for backups.
PSD’s getting that big is an issue, it could be an option to save the origional DNG, and a LOW rez version of the PSD which will at least give you the origional to work from and a file which shows you how you did the origional.
BRETT
I agree with Rob – I reckon that if I ever needed to re-edit a file, I’d do it differently anyway.
So unless I have a particularly complex PS edit, I would normally save a flattened version (I do retain the original RAW files though, so I can start again with an undegraded image).