At what size do you save your photographs?

<p>Mine end up at about 10"x6.7" (+/_), 300ppi, about 17-18mb in TIFF format.</p>

<p>Unless I have a specific purpose I save mine at full sized. No bigger, no smaller.</p>

<p>Ful original size as they come out of the camera. Saving them any smaller would be throwing away all those megapixels I paid so much for.</p>

<p>I save them all as RAW, so full size, unprocessed. I process and export as JPEG or TIFF as required.<br>

PPI is a meaningless number for files. More important is the absolute number of pixels. You should save at the same number of pixels (i.e., 2000 X 3000) as your camera's native resolution. You don't want to throw away pixels, you'll never get them back.</p>

<p><Chas><br /><br /></p>

<p>I'm with Charles. Images are saved full size, the edited and (usually) cropped files are exported at whatever they come out to be.</p>

<p>I'd prefer to not crop (or at least crop less...), but I'm still saving for that $11,000 lens... ;-)</p>

<p>I only save "keepers", but for those I save the Raw file and, at least, a processed jpg at it's full size, subject to cropping. If I might do further processing, then I save a full sized tiff.</p>

<p>I'm with Charles as well. Saved full size raw.</p>

<p>Ditto -- full size RAW</p>

<p>Digital stuff from the last few years are kept as dng (on my internal drive) and CR2 (external drive) aand in Lightroom until I have a purpose for an image. Then the question becomes unanswerable because it totally depends on what I'm going to do with it. A big print might be a 200MB Tiff; a candidate for my website might be 750 x 500 pixel jpg. With every variation in between. The key decision- which I suspect many people make- is to keep it as raw/accessible to Lightroom unless I know I need it. </p>

<p>Legacy film stuff is obviously different, and the smart answer is "at the size I scanned it"- but of course how big/which scanner is going to relate to purpose too. </p>

<p>Full size TIFF, 4.000 ppi @ 48bit, which is around 117 MB for a 35mm slide and 640 MB for a 6x9 slide. Other formats are around 1.5 GB per slide. But I keep the original slides, because I don't trust any digital storage.</p>

<p>I save all except the most useless files out of the camera in my archive folder on a second HD along with other folder of work ups at whatever size they end up as for whatever use they are put to. Small web file up to large print size. The precious 'negative' mentality etc :-) I have negatives from when I started in the fifties :-)</p>

<p>The saving to archive folder is part of my workflow in downloading from the camera card ... I first copy all to the archive folder and then move the files to an appropriate folder in the 'working' HD. Sadly I didn't do this from the start of digital as I discovered when looking for some 'old' files recently but storage is so much cheaper these days.</p>

<p>I keep the RAW for anything that is, or might become a keeper. Also keep a full-size JPEG for everything Any work is initially done in RAW, transferred to a JPEG and then a copy made for further work in P.Shop or some other tool. Disk is cheap.</p>

Original Raw, full sized 16 bit TIFF (not sharpened, I can sharpen it later after resizing), full sized JPEG, smaller

sharpened JPEG files for web use, and optionally a resized TIFF for printing a particular size. I back up my LR catalogs

in multiple places.

<p>I keep all RAW files and high quality jpgs of images that go on my web site, in addition and 800px images that go on PN or Flickr.<br>

It works out at about 1Tb per year.</p>

<p>To the OP: can you explain in more detail "photograph"? For example, is this scanned film, and what format, or from a digital camera, and which?</p>

<blockquote>At what size do you save your photographs?</blockquote>

<p>On whatever size paper I print them on.</p>

<p>Digital photos from a digital camera.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Digital photos from a digital camera.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Then I'd most definitely save the raw file. It has all the information, likely in the most compact format.</p>

<p>Thanks to all. I have read all the responses and I just have one question-what the heck is RAW? Seriously, I'm of the school of getting it right in JPEG so you don't have to spend hours on the computer trying to save bad exposures or adjust white balance. </p>

<p>OK, that's gonna set the cat amongst the pigeons.</p>

<p>I would advise you just stay with the processes you like to work with and not get into the debate about raw vs jpeg! As david has implied, this will start a flame war in no time.</p>

<p>LOL.</p>

<p>Sorry Sandord, I'm not laughing at you.</p>

<p>We ALL jumped to a conclusion that anyone concerned with these matters was shooting in RAW (the basic file format that most digital cameras shoot in. It's kind of like the equivalent of negatives or slides in a film camera). Most digital cameras will also produce a jpeg version, where the camera takes its own RAW image and applies, noise reduction, sharpening, contrast, saturation, etc. Some people like and are happy with the jpeg images that there cameras produce and never even look at the RAW images that their cameras produces. Others perfer to use programs like Lightroom, DxO Optics Pro, Aperture, IrfanView, etc., etc., etc., to apply their own choices of the very same parameters that the camera would apply itself, but in different proportions. Depending on the camera, you may or may not gain some dynamic range by working with the RAW file.</p>

<p>I'm a little surprised that you're taking a compressed JPEG and converting it to an uncompressed TIFF. You lost data with the conversion to JPEG and it will not be recovered by converting to TIFF. Starting with an uncompressed RAW and converting it to an uncompressed TIFF file, you might end up with a file exceeding 100MB. Then you'd resize that down to your printing size.</p>

<p>I'd suggest that you explore this, if for no other reason than to avoid compressing your images prior to your file print size/resolution decision. Even if you think your camera's JPEGs are "right", you still might want to consider avoiding compression until the final step, rather than making it the first step, as you do when you use in-camera JPEGs.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Seriously, I'm of the school of getting it right in JPEG so you don't have to spend hours on the computer trying to save bad exposures or adjust white balance.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>An alternate view is that RAW allows you full creative control over your well exposed and correctly white balanced images, rather than relying on a camera manufacturer's algorithm to decide what makes a nice Landscape. </p>

<blockquote>

<p>"Seriously, I'm of the school of getting it right in JPEG so you don't have to spend hours on the computer trying to save bad exposures or adjust white balance..."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>...says the guy with the Olympus EP-2 art filters.</p>

<p>That's cool. I like in-camera creative JPEG processing too. Especially the in-camera b&w tweaks. I use 'em a lot. Most of the time it works out. But it's just a tool, not a school or religion. Nobody's handing out sheepskins or hairshirts for getting it right in the camera when the camera offers all sorts of creative tools that simply move the editing from post-shooting to pre-shooting.</p>

<p>Regarding the original question, with Lightroom I tend to save only at the output size for the intended purpose. If for online display, usually JPEGs around 600-1500 pixels at the longest dimension. So far I'm not saving many photos in TIFF or other lossless format. Mostly if I like the edits I've made to the raw file I'll save it as a virtual copy and use the original for additional adjustments down the road. For prints, I just print directly from the adjusted raw file in LR rather than making a TIFF just for printing. No idea whether that's an ideal workflow or not, I'm still learning the ropes with Lightroom.</p>