Marc Rochkind has posted a wonderful article titled How to Back Up Your Personal Computer. I feel this is a must read for everyone who uses a computer. I’ve heard way too many stories of people losing all of their data for one reason or another. Very few users have bullet proof backup strategies, because it is more complex than most users know.

Marc is also the developer behind three very useful programs for managing image files: ImageIngester, Image Verifier, ImageReporter and SpanBurner. I’m using ImageIngester Pro and ImageVerifier, which together will cost you only $40. ImageIngester is saving us a ton of time processing files and Image Verifier is finding corruption in some of my early image files.
Marc is also very active on The DAM Forum which is Peter Krogh’s very educational Digital Asset Management forum.

It’s a shame to make a wonderful digital image and lose it. The pictures that I’ve missed or lost for one reason or another haunt me, so I have a healthy fear for the safety of every image I make. They say, “there are two kind of computer users, those who have lost data and those who WILL loose data.” At this point it’s probably more like those who have lost data and those who will loose data again, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Please post some comments on interesting ways you’ve lost data: Our most recent loss of data was from opening tiff files using Adobe Camera Raw(ACR) then saving them after adjustments. ACR opened these 17Megapixel files in 2.8Megapixel size, then we saved over the large files. We had to start over from the RAW files; two days of work down the drain.

You can also use ACR to save jpeg or tiff files as DNG files. This has some real possibilities. There are lots of reasons to shoot jpeg as an original file format: speed, card space, wireless transmission, etc. I don’t know of any good reason to shoot tiff as a camera file format. I do of course use tiff as derivative file format. The issue WAS that you had to edit the original file and save over it or you had to save a new file if you wanted to keep your original in tact. The DNG file format puts the original jpeg, the camera raw editing info, a derivative Jpeg preview file, and metadata all inside of the DNG bubble.

The jpeg preview file that’s included inside of the DNG is very important because it’s used by other applications like Expression Media for display and output. What you have inside a DNG is your original file (JPG or RAW), metadata, editing adjustments, and jpeg version of the applied edits. Looking at your corrected file instead of your original file is one of the biggest reasons to use DNG over other file formats.

I love having all my favorite ACR tools available for editing jpeg and tiff files. I’m used to these tools and they are all right there for use on jpeg originals and tiff derivatives alike. The ability to adjust the edits without damaging the file is also very nice, but (big but):

Using ACR on jpeg and tiff files is dangerous business. You no longer know that what your looking at is what the file really contains. There are other bleeding edge issues as well. The Adobe bridge Cache and the ACR Cache are complicated and problematic. I recently discovered that my Bridge Cache was 8Gigs of fragmented mess. I could not defrag it and I ended up starting a new cache folder and deleting the whole mess. There are small issues like files with layers and big issues like files opening up as 2.8 megapixels instead of 17 megapixels. If it sounds like I’m trying to scare you, I’m not. It’s just a warning that this is still a little bleeding edge and you need to be careful.

In my opinion, once you start using an ACR/DNG workflow on your tiff and jpeg files you will never want to go back.