I’ve kept the files I’ve used to make prints over the years for the longest time. The other day I deleted them – all of them. I was doing some digital housekeeping and found these archived print files were taking up some significant drive space. I initially kept them just in case a client wanted a reprint or I needed a reprint to correct a poor lab print sent to me. And over the years they accumulated.
These are not the original master files of course. If I made a 20×30 print, I would save a file with a -20×30 in the filename in a client-specific folder. While disk space is rather cheap to store them I asked myself the question – would I print this image the same way again if I were doing it from scratch today? For many, the answer could be a YES. For others – maybe I would tweak them ever so slightly. But with new enlargement and sharpening tools available today, I certainly would be tempted to revisit if I could squeeze just a bit more out of those photographs. As such, I may as well just start from the master original file again.
I don’t know what the “best practice” is for this aspect of photography. I suppose it is largely one of personal preference. I’ll probably continue to keep those files around for a year or two – but beyond that, I am questioning the purpose.
Do you have a system you use?
About the Featured Image: This is a visual of all my photographs represented as their digital files. The larger the box, the bigger the file size. It’s a handy little program called Grand Perspective for Macs. It’s one of the tools that pointed me to the large bit of space being taken up by my print files. The larger blocks are files that generally exceed 1GB in size.
I don’t keep client-specific prints. Just like Joe, I keep paper-specific proof copies, but they’re only virtual copies in Lightroom, so they take up very little actual space. I do find holding on to those valuable, because it will make printing them again, if the need arises, faster and easier (it often takes 2-3 attempts to get the print right, so it’s worth keeping the final for a specific paper).
So you make any paper-specific adjustments in LR only?
Yes, based on the soft-proofing first, and then based on how the first print looks… and the second one… until I get it to look “right” — which is why I like truthful, simply papers over the more “artistic” (textured) etc. looking ones… 😛
I look forward to reading your post on simple truthful papers! (unless you’ve already written one, I’ll take the egg on my face, slip some peaty scotch, and you can just drop a link ? ?
I don’t have a post but I must have mentioned Hahnemühle Fine Art Baryta Satin here and there. Works really well for me.
I believe I am familiar with that paper and agree!
I save the completed file after processing in Lightroom and Photoshop, but I keep them in a separate folder once done and not reimported into Lightroom because I find that system makes it hard to find those specific files among the thousands of others. In terms of printing, I put the paper type and profile as well as whether it should be printed in perceptual or relative colorimetric rendering in the ‘File Info’ portion of the photo in Photoshop so it gets saved as metadata with the file. If there are some aspects of the processing that are used only for printing and not for viewing the image on a computer then I put those adjustments into a ‘Print Only’ group at the top of the layer stack and turn the group on if I print the file. That way I have all the info I need with the master file. I can then just duplicate the file, flatten it, and resize it when I want to make a print from it. After printing I can delete it.
Thanks for laying out your process Howard. I need to make a habit of creating the “Print Only” layer group like you do instead of those adjustments being in the individual print files. Do you usually lighten a bit? At least for lab prints, I always found I needed to pull up the image to be a little brighter to avoid it being too dark in print form.
I store them by paper t ype. When I do a soft proof and select the paper for a print and then “Create Proof Copy” LR will produce a filename with the paper type included. I’ve created smart collections for each of the papers and it auto populates that collection. I’ve often been tempted to delete them as I really have no need to keep them around. Perhaps today.
That’s taking it to yet another level, Joe!
They might be easier to “keep an eye on” if they are in a LR catalog (which I didn’t do) / collection.
I haven’t printed for a several years. And, as you, I deleted them when I realized they were just sitting there. I also would, and do, tweak images from the past so why keep them. I send files to Fine Art America according to their file specifications and let go of it all.
That reminds me, I should probably delete the FAA files I’ve already uploaded! 🙂
The system I’ve used is the same as yours – I still have all those print files and should look to get rid of them! I think keeping them until the client has the print in their hands is a good idea, maybe even a bit longer, but not forever! I agree that if I were to print that image again I’d likely start from the original finished file – so why keep those many gigabytes of files for no reason!?
Exactly. I had print files from 5-10 years ago that were just occupying space in backups, etc.