To Delete or Not To Delete...

[Abel]

Many people have varying opinions on whether or not they delete certain images from their pc after a shoot. Often times those that opt to delete files usually use the reasoning of wanting to save space on their hard drives.

I for one, never delete anything... no matter how out of focus or how bad the shot is etc. I simply do not delete it because I have run across instances where at the beginning I thought a photo was garbage only yo find out months later that a new post processing technique i just learned would work great on that particular shot.

my thinking is... hard drive space is cheap.... never delete.

what side of the fence do you typically follow?

[Snarfy]

i never delete anything, i backup files on an extra harddrive, and i dont save over original images during processing. i make "edit" folders and save both .psd and .jpg into them.

/obsessive organizing

[imported_ScottBuckel]

I have several photographer friends that edit very heavily. As Abel mentions hard disk space is very cheap these days. With a little organization and ratings I find it pretty easy to find the images I want to use. The otehr not so good ones are also readily available as well.

I do nto know if many people here have read Peter Krogh's book - Digital Asset Management - the DAM Book. It has many great ideas on organizing your images and he to metnions how cheap storage is these days.

I am in the middle of converting my cataloging approach, using ideas that I got from Peter's book. If you want to learn more about his approach, Peter has a fairly active forum www.thedambook.com


Scott

[FerrisPhoto]

I rarely delete anything. I use three 250gig external drives. You can get them for a hundred bucks now. When one fills up, I'll just replace it.

[Abel]

Speaking of Digital Asset Management this is the little filing system that I have found pretty beneficial in my workflow and storage scheme. I can usually find stuff fairly quickly having the event name in the directory name as shown below...

All 3 levels shown below are directory levels...


2006

01-January-2006

01jan06 - Rockets v. Clippers
02jan06 - Joe's Birthday Party
05jan06 - Matthews Rehearsal Dinner
06jan06 - Matthews Wedding

02-February-2006

15feb06 - Texans v. Dolphins
16feb06 - The Lake
22feb06 - Staind Concert
28feb06 - Family BBQ

03-March-2006
04-April-2006
etc

2007

01-January-2007
02-February-2007
03-March-2007
04-April-2007
05-May-2007
etc

Thought this may help a few that may not have a system set in place yet...

[Snarfy]

my organization is very similar to that. i continue organization 2 levels beyond by naming the edited photos based on size, crop, date, and number.

[jeff1.8]

I keep one of these in my camera bag since i currently have no computer i put all my stuff on it. Works on mac and pc.

[J20DB]

I'd also recommend the DAM Book; it completely changed the way I thought about organization and storage.

[imported_Marc Kurth]

Originally Posted by Abel

Many people have varying opinions on whether or not they delete certain images from their pc after a shoot. Often times those that opt to delete files usually use the reasoning of wanting to save space on their hard drives.

I for one, never delete anything... no matter how out of focus or how bad the shot is etc. I simply do not delete it because I have run across instances where at the beginning I thought a photo was garbage only yo find out months later that a new post processing technique i just learned would work great on that particular shot.

my thinking is... hard drive space is cheap.... never delete.

what side of the fence do you typically follow?

I'm fairly middle of the road, but I tend to save more often than not for the same reason you mentioned - new PS skills have made marginal shots very usable for me.

With 500GB drives being cheap and hardware RAID on motherboards, I went with 2TB. (I'm not an IT type guy, but storage is important to me so I had learn how to d it)

Marc

[imported_Mark]

I shoot a lot, I delete a lot. It comes down to picking the best and I edit very tightly. I'd rather look at my greatest shots without wading through (or storing) the junk. I come home from a wedding with 26GB+ of RAW images which would produce about 70GB of tiff master files. With 35 weddings per year plus all the engagement sessions and Landscape images (500-600mb each w/layers) and nothing would hold it all


Pro vs Amature? The pro has a bigger wastebasket.

[imported_JeromeL]

I agree with mark. I know space is cheap but time isn't. I don't have time to wade through junk.

[chrisfotos]

I try to delete RAW files when I know I won't need to revisit photos anymore. I always keep the JPG processed photos. Although shooting so much, it's not so easy going through every single photo, selecting ones to be deleted. So half of my stuff is just stored in a folder that I haven't touched for months.. 90% which probably should be in the trash.

[Wise Moon]

I have been debating this subject for some time now and I have been getting ready to clean up my hard drive, but it is so hard to delete something you created. I agree with Abel that hard drive space is cheap and I have not deleted a thing...yet.

On the other hand if you can honestly look at a photograph you have taken and not see any purpose or use in keeping then by all means its time to dump it. Thats the beauty of digital, if your out having fun and have no specific purpose other than to test settings, enjoy the surrounding, then you definitely have the freedom to delete at leisure.

For business purposes I find it more beneficial to not delete any photo as in time there will almost always come another use or purpose for those photographs. My two cents... Just stock up on your hard drives of choice and shoot at will, life will be more enjoyable.

[apple crisp]

I save most, delete a few. I've got a good organizing file system too. I have to organize some photos into categories, so sometimes a card can have photos that go into more than one folder. Then within each category there can be sub-categories. The actual photo folders are labeled with the year first, like: 2007 04-25 flowers.

I appreciate hearing how others do it. So far I have not had to buy external drives as I have two huge internal drives. But it's a great idea for the future.

When I edit a shot, usually I name it with a shortened form of the number first then something descriptive, then how many pixels wide and the dpi if it's high res, like: 024-guitarshop-1000-300d.jpg. This way I can easily identify which version it is and also quickly find the original to do another version as needed! If it's for email or web and it's a version at 72 dpi, I simply don't note that in the name - I know if it doesn't say otherwise, it's 72. I use photos for so many purposes that I came up with this system very naturally over time. It works for me. :)

[JodyTakesPictures]

I shoot a lot and delete a lot. If I'm shooting a Padres game, for example, I'll come home with 300-400 images. My wire service wants around 60 images so I'll go through everything, delete the obvious trash, then go back and decide which are the best ones, send 60 of the very best, and catalog the rest. I use two 300 gb external hard drives and a 650gb external hard drive, plus I copy everything to DVD (I've had a hard drive fail and it sucks), plus I upload to an off site storage on the web ($99.00 a year, unlimited). So I have several levels of protection.

The way I catalog my images is like this:

Baseball:

Little League:

06Apr07 - Game 1
06Apr07 - Game 2
26May07 Bandits
28May07 Bandits

San Diego Padres:

28Apr07 vs Dodgers
01May07 vs Nationals
13May07 vs Cardinals

MVHS Baseball:

25Apr07 vs TVHS (away)
27Apr07 vs TVHS (home)
02May07 vs Great Oak (home)
11May07 vs TCHS (home)

Mountain Biking:

10Mar07Fontana
11Mar07 Fontana

Woodward West

01Apr07 Race 1 & 2
31Mar07 Hangar 18
31Mar07 Practice
01Apr07 Podium

25Mar07 ATV Nationals:

Race 1
Race 2

People/Portraits:

13Feb07 Floyd Landis @ LaCosta
16Mar07 Colleen Ditch Birthday Party
17Mar07 Eric Clapton
26Apr07 Dylan Sims

When I edit, I rename the file by dropping the IMG_ from the file name. Therefore, the unedited image is preserved and I end up with two files. Make sense?

:~)

Jody