[Digikam-users] How to best save images

[Daniel Bauer]

On Sunday 24 January 2010 12:12:43, jdd wrote:
> Le 24/01/2010 11:28, Andrew Goodbody a écrit :
> > Converting from raw to anything you will lose data. Converting from raw
> > includes various processes such as de-mosaicing and applying white
> > balance.
> >
> > Storage is cheap, data is irreplaceable. However you must choose where
> > your priorities are.
> 
> not so cheap and don't underestimate the time and work necessary to
> scan all a collection, finding the various repositories...

If you want good photos you will have to apply some time on them... 
> 
> For various reason (unrelevant here), I have to shoot many images. 500
> for one evening is common. Most of these are unusefull and are very
> soon deleted. On the rest most are for family fun and don't need any
> real quality. Some only mat once have to be edited with max quality.
> 
> I don't have yet a real solution. When I had an OES 350D, I only used
> jpeg fine. Now with my new EOS 50D,I can have raw+jpeg.

I shoot raw+small jpg. I copy all on computer in a folder away from digiKam. 
Copy all raws on external hard drive plus dvd. (opinion what is a "good" 
picture may change in time and then it's nice to still have all raw files...)

I import small jpgs to digikam and do the selection (which pictures to edit). 
Delete the rest of the small jpgs. Move the corresponding raws to my 
Virtualbox shared folder.

I must confess: I use Canons Software (on Win XP in Virtualbox) to "decode" 
the raws. Although I really dislike Win, the Canon Software is very good and 
easy to use. I put the setting for all the images, save those settings (it 
will not alter the raw files) and then let them convert in a batch process.

Finally copy the processed files back to the shared folder, convert them to 
png and import those into digikam. This is where I do cropping etc. and give 
them the final color aspects. 

Finally I do retouching on the pngs in Gimp and then convert them to jpgs.

> 
> But it's an enormous amount of data. Simply copying it from the camera
> to the computer takes ages

This is true. But I have a negative/slides archives that takes much more space 
(and costs) than some external hard drives and dvds.
> 
> What I would like is a centralized file management: for example be
> able to remove both raw and jpeg on one action (now I have to scan
> file names).

I leave the original file-name intact thru all the steps. So I can use find to 
scan an album and create a list. Then I edit this list to the according wishes 
(move/delete/copy etc.) and let run this list as a shell script.

> however I have to say when I bough my 50D, digikam couldn't open the
> raw files, this stopped me a lot and I have to rethink things

Never stop thinking, the world is changing all tme time :-)

Daniel
-- 
Daniel Bauer photographer Basel Barcelona
professional photography: http://www.daniel-bauer.com