Saving images out of camera

[Red Sky]

I know there has been a lot of topics on storing images long term, and I know of the hazards of jpegs that seem to loose something over time. However, what are your opinions for this senerio: I like to document historical changes in my town, such as buildings that are to be torn down. I went out this morning and shot a few dozen shots of two such buildings. I shoot jpeg at the highest resolution and image size my 7 mp camera allows, though I do have the opportunity to shoot raw. I get home and transfer them to my hardrive in their own files. They will probably sit there for quite a long time as I have no plans to do anything with them other than look at them in the future. I may want a print of them, I can't tell right now. Since I like to shoot a lot of pictures is there a format that is best for preserving for just safekeeping? I could do a batch process with .tiff or .psd, or should I just shoot and save with raw? What is the good compromise for longevity and file size? I think I saw that it is best to keep them on the hardrive rather than burn them to DVD...can anyone give their opinion on this? Thanks, and I will take my answer off the air.

[Carbone]

First, just to make sure... JPEG do not deteriorate over time. Only the saving and resaving damage a JPEG.

Safekeeping may be done in JPEG, as long as you consider your JPEG the negatives, and as such, you only work on a copy and save that copy in another format (i.e. TIFF, PSD, PNG anything that a save don't damage).

Ray

[GaryK]

Hey Steven

I would also recommend moving them to a CD/DVD. Don't open them and save them to a CD, just drag them or use one of the burning software packages available. It takes nothing for a hard drive to crash and then you have lost them, or at least will have to pay dearly to see if they can be recovered.

[JonE]

PSE also has a built-in function to allow you to either make a backup copy or to archive off certain photos to a CD.