Should I archive photos as RAW or convert them to TIFF for easier viewing?

Asked 11/6/2010

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I started by keeping my photos in RAW, but it’s inconvenient to browse them because my computer doesn’t always show thumbnails or open them easily in basic photo viewers. Would it be better to store my images as TIFF instead, or should I keep the RAW files for long-term storage?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

15y ago

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Storing images as TIFF files is very space inefficient compared with raw, as TIFF images store three colours per pixel (at 8 or 16 bits per colour component, 24 or 48 total) compared to raw which just has the monochrome sensor data at 12 or 14 bits per pixel total. This monochrome data is interpolated into colour by exploiting the RGB colour filters placed in an alternating pattern over each pixel. To store the full range of colours available in the Raw you would need a 48bpp TIFF, which would take up about three times as much space (before compression).

Also raw preserves the maximum amount of editing flexibility - you're not commiting to any particular white balance or noise reduction setting. TIFFs are better than lossy JPEG images for archival purposes, but still not as good as raw.

I always keep the original Raw files, and keep a matching set of high quality JPEGs for easy viewing. There are arguments for using TIFF for archival purposes as it's an older, better documented format, understood by a much wider range of software. However if you're concerned about future compatibility then you can losslessly convert your proprietary Raw format images to Adobe Digital Negative files, which is an open format more likely to be supported in the future. The redundancy in an uncompressed 48bpp TIFF will make it slightly more tolerant of data errors, however. As Reid states there are better ways to guard against data loss, such as a backup system with error correcting codes, mirrored RAIDs etc.

Originally by user1375. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user1375

15y ago

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For long-term storage, keep the RAW files. RAW preserves the original sensor data and gives you the most flexibility later for white balance, noise reduction, and other edits. Converting to TIFF usually means committing to a processed interpretation of the image, and you generally cannot recover the full original RAW data from that TIFF afterward.

TIFF can be a good archival export format compared with JPEG because it can be lossless and high bit-depth, but it is much less space-efficient than RAW. A high-quality TIFF may take roughly several times more storage than the original RAW.

So the practical approach is: archive RAW as your master files, and create TIFF or JPEG copies only when you need easier viewing, sharing, printing, or further editing in a standard image format. If your issue is browsing RAW files, use software or codecs that generate thumbnails/previews rather than replacing your archive with TIFF.

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