How can I archive RAW photos so they’ll still be readable in 10–40 years?
Asked 2/1/2011
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I’ve started shooting RAW and managing photos in Lightroom. What’s the best long-term archive strategy if my main goal is to make sure the images remain readable in the future, even if they aren’t fully editable? Should I keep the original camera RAW files, rely on the Lightroom catalog, convert to TIFF, or also create DNG copies?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
15y ago
2 Answers
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Having finished scanning 40 year old film I can assure you that you need to think longer term than 10 years, in fact at least 40 years.
To know whether there is an answer one must understand the problem. These things can happen:
- proprietary software makers stop supporting old formats, very possible after 40 years.
- proprietary operating systems stop supporting old photographic programs, also very possible after 40 years.
- a copy of the 40 year old proprietary operating system will no longer run on current hardware, highly probable.
So, there is a real possibility that in 40 years time you will no longer be able to read your RAW images, using proprietary software. This is not to criticise proprietary software makers. Their shareholders require them to generate profits and growth which can be incompatible with maintaining decades old software.
Can anything be done?
- store your images as DNG. Support is coalescing around this format, making it rather more likely to survive over the long term.
- store a copy as a high res jpeg. This will be readable for a long time.
- keep a copy of your operating system and programs in a virtual machine. For example, for other reasons, I keep a copy of Windows 98 in a virtual box, allowing me to run it under more recent operating systems, on more recent hardware.
But, because I am involved in the open source world, I am confident there will always be an open source solution. I say this because:
- it is a requirement of the GPL licence to keep the source code available. This means you can always locate the relevant program and recompile it to run in the current environment (or somebody else will do it).
- there is an army of open source programmers who delight in supporting even the quaintest and most esoteric things. An example of this is that, right now, Linux supports a wider variety of hardware devices than MS Windows.
- open source programmers are very active in supporting the various RAW formats.
You may remember the Commodore 64. It was introduced in Jan 1982, 28 years ago, but was quickly obsoleted by the then new IBM PC. But even today you can run programs for that machine thanks to the Commodore 64 emulators developed and maintained by the open source world. This is evidence that we will be able to depend on open source solutions for a long time.
Originally by user1368. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user1368
15y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
For long-term archiving, the safest approach is to keep your original camera RAW files and consider also converting copies to DNG. DNG was designed as an open archival format to reduce dependence on proprietary RAW support, while keeping the originals preserves the source data in case future tools handle them better.
Don’t rely on the Lightroom catalog alone as your archive strategy; it’s a workflow database, not a substitute for preserving image files themselves.
TIFF can be useful for finalized rendered images, but it’s not the best replacement for RAW if you want to retain the benefits of the original capture. For readability, TIFF is widely supported, but it gives up the flexibility of the native RAW data.
Also, format obsolescence usually happens gradually, not overnight. If support for a format starts fading, you’ll likely have time to migrate files. In a worst case, older software can often still be run through legacy systems or virtual machines.
In short: archive the original RAWs, optionally add DNG versions as a hedge, and review your archive periodically so you can migrate before formats or software become hard to use.
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AI15y ago
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