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What do you do with your RAW files?

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Nenita2

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I just tried shooting RAW for the first time this weekend. I have some great pics, but they take up so much space on my disk. And the other thing that annoys me is that I have to open Lightroom to see the previews, they don't show in windows explorer. So my question is, what do you people do with your raw files? You leave them like that? After you post process, do you save as a RAW file or in JPEG? If in JPEG do you delete the RAW file to free up space? And what is the -.xmp file that accompanies each NEF file for?
 
right now, they are taking up space on HD.

My plan is to buy a USB hard drive and also burn to DVD

I think it makes a lot of sense to save them since later, as your skills progress in postprocessing, you may be able to make old things new with those RAW files.
 
If you are running Windows XP you can download an add on from Microsoft that allows you to see raw file.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=D48E808E-B10D-4CE4-A141-5866FD4A3286&displaylang=en

Once I download my raw files I view them using any one of several options open to me. Windows Vista has a very good viewer, I also have Nikon View NX, Adobe PSE-5 Organizer, and IrFanView. If I want to display or print a photo I convert it to jpeg, I do not save as NEF as I see no point in doing so. NEF files differ from one camera to another and from one application to another. Generally if you save a NEF from a program only that program will be able to open the file, and sometimes even the program that wrote the file can’t open it.

I take a fair amount of pictures that I judge to be junk, and I delete them. I keep photos from the current month on my “C” drive and I archive previous months pictures to my external “D” drive. My “D” drive is a 300GB drive, and I figure it will hold somewhere in the vicinity of 60,000 NEF files. I believe you can now get 500GB drives now for around $100, maybe less on sale. One Terabyte drives are becoming quite common and they will hold a lot of photos.

The xmp file is a record of the changes that you made to the NEF file. NEF files are never altered to the extent that the raw data is changed. Adobe creates an xmp file to record what changes you make so that the next time you open the raw file in Lightroom it can re-apply the changes. Nikon uses a different approach and adds a section to the NEF file and records the changes there so that it can re-apply the changes; I just opened and closed a NEF file with Capture NX2 and it went from 5MB to 7MB. Adobe only records the last session of changes made, whereas Nikon keeps a running log.

--
Brooks
http://bmiddleton.smugmug.com/
 
As already mentioned nowadays HD capacity costs almost nothing.

The most stupid thing you could do is to delete RAW files. It is like in the "old" film days making one print from a negative and then putting it in the waste basket. More prints needed: photocopier.

Saving the results of Lightroom in JPEG format for further PP is not a good idea too. Save in TIFF or the native Photoshop format. As the very last step in PP you could convert to JPEG.
.xmp files:

Lightroom or any other RAW converter will never, never alter the RAW file (it is a negative, remember) . The xmp file is a kind of text file describing the modifications you did in Lightroom. Next time you open the RAW, the result of RAW+XMP will be shown on the monitor. The same will happen when you save to another format; In any case the contents of the RAW file will be not modified.

Wim
 
Nenita2 said:
So my question is,
what do you people do with your raw files? You leave them like that?
Click to expand...
Yes. At least the best of them.
Nenita2 said:
After you post process, do you save as a RAW file or in JPEG?
Click to expand...
I sort photos into Best, Average and Bin folders

For the Best folder I use NX and save the changes in the NEF file but also produce a jpeg to upload to Zenfolio. The Average shots I batch process to jpeg and delete the NEF. (Maybe I should just delete them but I am a hoarder. Anyway I can always delete them later)
Nenita2 said:
If in JPEG do you delete the RAW file to free up space? And what is the
-.xmp file that accompanies each NEF file for?
Click to expand...
It is a sidecar file keeping track of the changes made to the raw file. as Brooks has said you don't get them NX.

--
Chris Elliott

Nikon D Eighty + Fifty - Other equipment in Profile

http://PlacidoD.Zenfolio.com/
 
Brooks P said:
...
Nikon uses a different approach and adds a section to
the NEF file and records the changes there so that it can re-apply
the changes; I just opened and closed a NEF file with Capture NX2 and
it went from 5MB to 7MB. Adobe only records the last session of
changes made, whereas Nikon keeps a running log.
Click to expand...
Brooks,

As I expect you know the main reason for the jump in size is that the NEF now has a full resolution jpeg stored inside it rather than the compressed Basic jpeg it had before. Personally I could do without that!

Irfanview and many other programmes read the embedded jpeg to display the image rather than the RAW image and that is much faster. The Windows plug-in reads the RAW file and that takes a little longer.

--
Chris Elliott

Nikon D Eighty + Fifty - Other equipment in Profile

http://PlacidoD.Zenfolio.com/
 
I know there are programs available that will extract the full jpeg image, but I have never found a reason to do so, so I have never looked into them. I also suspect that Nikon may increase the size of the area that they log the changes in, which may be part of the IPTC?

I know somebody was complaining some months back on here that if you saved a file from NX as a NEF file, Adobe Lightroom couldn't read it. That is because the file is no longer a D60, D80, etc NEF file, the new NEF file is now a NX NEF file and Lightroom is trying to justify it to the NEF protocol for the appropriate Dxx NEF file, and it doesn't match up.
--
Brooks
http://bmiddleton.smugmug.com/
 
Chris Elliott said:
As I expect you know the main reason for the jump in size is that the
NEF now has a full resolution jpeg stored inside it rather than the
compressed Basic jpeg it had before.
Click to expand...
I for sure didn't know, but I have been wondering. Thanks for letting us know.
Chris Elliott104343 said:
Personally I could do without that!
Click to expand...
Me too, and very much so...
--
Marcus

 
Brooks P said:
I know somebody was complaining some months back on here that if you
saved a file from NX as a NEF file, Adobe Lightroom couldn't read it.
That is because the file is no longer a D60, D80, etc NEF file, the
new NEF file is now a NX NEF file and Lightroom is trying to justify
it to the NEF protocol for the appropriate Dxx NEF file, and it
doesn't match up.
Click to expand...
If Lightroom has any issues with a NEF that has been edited by NX, then that's a bug in Lightroom. NX will update the embedded JPEG(s) and the the thumbnail to reflect the edits you've made but the raw data isn't touched and the overall structure of the NEF doesn't change much apart from some minor changes to the Makernote (which is largely ignored by Lightroom anyway).

Is it possible they were saving a JPEG as a NEF, and expecting Lightroom to make sense of it? Because that'd be a whole different matter!

--
http://www.pixelfixer.org
 
I agree with most everyone saying to keep ALL raw files, plus the jpg's you make from them. I am just starting to shoot raw now, but there is NO reason to ever get rid of them anymore. Hard drive space is absurdly inexpensive these days, and still going down.

A second point...not only should you keep everything, but you MUST BACKUP all your files. There are a variety of ways to do so...but do not EVER allow all your photos and other important data to remain on any single drive. BACKUP regularly and be happy. :)
 
Yes it is entirely possible that he started with a jpeg file; but as I'll explain I don't think that is a problem, although I don't know why you would want to create a NEF from a jpeg.

I don't know what type of file the input was, but the person did say that they were doing a “Save as” and specifying NEF. At the time I didn’t have either Lightroom or NX so there was no way that I could play around and see if I could duplicate his problem. I just remembered that I have NX2 as a trial so I tried playing around.

I opened a NEF and made a couple of quick adjustments and then did a “Save as”; I was somewhat surprised that NX2 asked me if I wanted to over-write the existing file, but I went ahead and said yes, and then I exited NX2. I still don’t have Lightroom, but I do have PSE-5, and I had no problem opening the rewritten file with ACR and PSE-5.

I then went out and shot a few jpeg images with my D50. I opened one of the jpegs in NX2, did a Quick Fix and USM adjustment and then did a “Save as” specifying NEF and then closed NX2. I had no problem opening the NEF file generated by NX2 with ACR and then PSE-5.

Whether there was a problem with NX that has been fixed I can’t say. I can’t how PSE-5 could open a NEF file created by NX2 and Lightroom could not since they both use the same raw routines created by Adobe.

Personally I can’t see any advantage in creating a new NEF, or over-writing and existing NEF file, once the image has been modified by NX or NX2. The original data is there if needed, and with NX all the version you have created are there too, so why create another NEF file?

But playing around today I have to conclude that at present there is no problem, and I suspect the poster was doing something out of the ordinary, or he had a corrupted software.

--
Brooks
http://bmiddleton.smugmug.com/
 
Brooks P said:
.....
I opened a NEF and made a couple of quick adjustments and then did a
“Save as”; I was somewhat surprised that NX2 asked me if I wanted to
over-write the existing file, but I went ahead and said yes, and then
I exited NX2. I still don’t have Lightroom, but I do have PSE-5, and
I had no problem opening the rewritten file with ACR and PSE-5.
...
Personally I can’t see any advantage in creating a new NEF, or
over-writing and existing NEF file, once the image has been modified
by NX or NX2. The original data is there if needed, and with NX all
the version you have created are there too, so why create another NEF
file?
Click to expand...
Brooks,

Unless I am doing something wrong NX will not automatically save details of changes into the existing RAW file. You have to save your changes with Save As or you will lose the changes you have made That is no problem if you have just tweaked one setting but is a pain if you have spent 30 minutes carefully PPing a difficult shot.

The program will ask you if you want to overwrite the original out of an abundance of caution. In fact I "Save As" to a different directory so I do not get the message unless I reprocess and overwrite.

It might help someone to know that a NEF that has been saved in NX has a lower case ".nef" extension whereas the original camera file has a ".NEF" extension. So you can easily tell which you have worked on and which you have yet to process.

--
Chris Elliott

Nikon D Eighty + Fifty - Other equipment in Profile

http://PlacidoD.Zenfolio.com/
 
I have so many programs installed on my computer, That I am not sure which one gives me the ability to see Raw thumbnails and photos for almost any camera......Perhaps if you google for an answer you will find one that works for you.
It may be Faststone image viewer but I am not sure.
--
Gene from Western Pa

http://imageevent.com/grc6
http://grc225.zenfolio.com/
FZ10....20 and 30 and FZ18

D50 ....D80 - 18 to 200VR- 50mm 1.8 - 80 to 400 OS



Just trying to learn and it's slow going!
 
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