Image Formats for Photo Archiving

Did you know that the “raw” in “raw photo” isn’t an acronym? It’s just “raw” as in “unprocessed”. So when someone writes it as “RAW”, they are being incorrect? I’ve been looking at the best way to archive old raw photos in my photo library, in an attempt to dig myself out of the pit of despair that is photo library management. My Sony a6500 (and the a6000 before it) save images as Sony ARW files. From the 24MP sensor, these images are usually around 24MB. As I’ll explain later, shooting with these larger files (instead of having the camera just save JPEGs) is worth it, but for long-term storage of images I took years ago, maybe the storage isn’t worth it. The best case scenario here is that I can export the ARW files from my photo library to a format that cuts 20–30% of the file size, but still gives me enough data to go back and edit them. Ideally if I edit one of these photos, I’m not prevented from making adjustments due to a lack of data. ARW files from my a6500 have an…

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