[Digikam-users] How to best save images

[Martin (KDE)]

Am Sonntag, 24. Januar 2010 schrieb Martin Senftleben:
> After the discussion about quality loss etc. with different file
> formats, I would like some recommendation.
> In order to save space on the camera card, it would be best to use
> only jpg format, but it's not the highest quality. So I'd rather
>  use the raw format (I just got a Canon EOS 7D) to take pictures,
>  even though that takes more space on the card (then I buy a few
>  more), because I tend to forget to press the raw button on the
>  camera when a valuable picture is taken.
> When I download the images, I could let digikam transfer the images
> into the png format. Would that be ok, i.e. without any loss? Or
>  would it still be better to keep both the raw image and the png
>  image? Or would it be ok to take pictures as jpg and on download
>  transfer them to the png format? Would the results be the same?

Currently I shoot photos raw and midlle quality jpeg and copy these 
files to my harddisk with digikam. Usually I don't touch jpeg files 
any more. They are for a quick overview only. For digikam this is not 
necessary but for normal file managers and gwenview it is best 
handling. If I have to touch any photo, I use the raw one and I must 
confess: I open them with gimp but usually from digikam.

If I have a series of photos to work on I use UFRaw to make the basic 
settings and store my settings in ID files. Newest UFRaw can store 
fine rotation and clipping too. With UFRaw's batch handling I can 
convert the raw photos automatically (with the previously saved 
individual settings).

So for me raw data are the core. And I dream of a program which stores 
all the steps I do on the photo as command in a config file. So I can 
change some parameter in between without doing all the stuff once 
again.

At the end of my processing I mostly have jpegs. But I mostly can 
replay it automatically from raw.

If you don't want to handle raw data (the 7D raw data are huge and 
take a lot of time to process) it seems to be best to convert jpeg to 
png. I tried it once, but it is way to slow for my hardware. I never 
tried the new format.

> 
> Thanks for any comments. If there is something to read up about it,
> I'd be glad to be pointed to it.
> 
> Martin
> 

Martin