What kind of file to use for photography archive.

Every element from this image was cut out and the image reassembled to get the the desired effect. That would have ben imposible if it was a JPG image. It can be of much importance which format is used to save images. Specially if format like JPG is used. JPG format compresses the information avery time it is saved. Therefore it is vital to a photographer if JPG is used that you have an software for writing the metadata into the root of the file with out re saving it.

If the jpg is saved over and over again the end result of it will be highly corrupted and unusable file. You do not want to touch the file much, in fact you might as well look at it as finished product, right away. There is limited headroom for image editing in JPG. Large altering of tone and color tend to exaggerate the pixel blocks that form the JPG. Even though JPG does a fair job of preserving luminance data its heavy compression corrupts color data which can effect skin tones and degrade the image.

By using JPG you are letting the camera software convert the raw image that is captured. Your ability to affect the outcome on a picture to picture basis is limited. You more or less leave it to the camera to interpret the subject photographed. JPG is like having a enlarged print in hand and no film. Every time you want to do an other copy or change any thing in the image, you will have to make a new copy of that print and work from there. Every one knows how it goes with a copy machine, Put the original in. Make a copy, then make a copy of that copy and so on. You will end by having blurry things on paper. The same goes for JPG and re saving it

read more in raw pipeline by Ted dillard  

All cameras capture raw Almost all of ordinary cameras save images as jpg. This is a bit strange as all cameras capture the image as raw data. Better cameras have the possibilities of saving in Raw format. This format can have different ending and be of different style all depending on the camera manufacture. In spite of the cry out of Photographers, camera vendors have not listened and made up one universal Raw format. Adobe has made an effort to help here by making the DNG format and make the code for it public, but at the moment only few vendors give you the possibility to save images in this mode. Some do give you the chance of saving in TIF but that is rare and slow process. All the try of making an open source raw format seem to be slow in progress and not get popularity enough to be used. All these endings and difference in files is complicated and it is no wonder if you look at file names with endings like jpg, eps, psd, Ccdr, raw, cr2, nef, dng and tif it tells you little if nothing except if you are a programmer.. All those different forms create a problem. We are dependent up on the support of these formats in the future by software houses. It is therefor that format like .TIF is favorable as it is one of the oldest format and with the best support. It is writable and readable by all computer platforms and every software that works with images and image documents reads it. Still the tiff format is a developed format and even though you can save informations losslessy with out any harm to the original your work on the file can degrade the file.

No question about the RAW For those that want the fullest of quality there is no question about RAW but as said before it is not developed format and therefore each time you want to use it you will have to develop it. This is both advantage and disadvantage. Its like having a film in your hands. Every time you need an image from that film you will have to get to the darkroom and do a copy. One big issue for photographers is file size and the storage space. It is a bit trouble some thought that Photographers have to go through when they look to the future. Will there be computers that read the files. While there is no one open iso coded standard, the future of the photograph is in the hands of the software houses, not in the hands of the photographer as it was with the film. The only real way of working is keeping your raw and exporting tiff. You can always convert to JPG from there.  

TIFF format Tagged-Image File Format (TIFF, TIF) is used to exchange files between applications and computer platforms. TIFF is a flexible bitmap image format supported by virtually all paint, image-editing, and page-layout applications. Also, virtually all desktop scanners can produce TIFF images. The TIFF format provides greater compression and industry compatibility than Photoshop format (PSD), and is the recommended format for exchanging files between Lightroom and Photoshop. You can save TIFF image files with a bit depth of 8 bits or 16 bits per channel.

JPEG format Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) format is commonly used to display photographs and other continuous tone images in web photo galleries, slideshows, presentations, and other online services. JPEG retains all color information in an RGB image but compresses file size by selectively discarding data. A JPEG image is automatically decompressed when opened. In most cases, the Best Quality setting produces a result indistinguishable from the original.