RSNA: Top tips for photo editing, backup
CHICAGO—The RAW file format, an alternative imaging format, offers improved photo editing, compared with traditional techniques, said Mahesh M. Thapa, MD, of Seattle Children’s Hospital and University of Washington, in a Nov. 28 presentation during the 97th Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting of the Radiology Society of North America (RSNA).
The RAW file format—which Thapa likened to a digital photo negative—takes up significantly more space than the more common JPEG format, but the advantages include better photo manipulation capabilities and less risk of permanently reducing image quality through deletion of data.
“Let’s say you start manipulating an image: you add a little contrast, increase the saturation, add a little sharpening; the more changes you make, the worse the state of [a hypothetical] histogram becomes [and] more data gets thrown away,” he said, referring to JPEG file editing. “That’s not true for RAW imaging, which is completely reversible. Everything you save gets saved as a separate file.”
To edit RAW images requires a separate program to display the image, and there are numerous programs available, which is a drawback, Thapa noted. “That’s one of the downsides. There is no universal RAW format,” he said, adding that the photos also require more massaging and work on behalf of the user.
Three times the charm for image back up
On backing up images, Thapa recommended storing them on a computer, a Drobo system and online using a website called SmugVault. The Drobo system is a device that chains together multiple hard drives, caching the information so that if one hard drive fails, it saves the information using the others.
“All the hard drives get consolidated, and any data that gets stored in there gets stored redundantly over those multiple drives,” he said.
However, a third backup is essential. That’s where SmugVault, which allows users to upload virtually unlimited amounts of data, comes into play. “If [the image] doesn’t exist in three places, it’s not really backed up,” he concluded.
The RAW file format—which Thapa likened to a digital photo negative—takes up significantly more space than the more common JPEG format, but the advantages include better photo manipulation capabilities and less risk of permanently reducing image quality through deletion of data.
“Let’s say you start manipulating an image: you add a little contrast, increase the saturation, add a little sharpening; the more changes you make, the worse the state of [a hypothetical] histogram becomes [and] more data gets thrown away,” he said, referring to JPEG file editing. “That’s not true for RAW imaging, which is completely reversible. Everything you save gets saved as a separate file.”
To edit RAW images requires a separate program to display the image, and there are numerous programs available, which is a drawback, Thapa noted. “That’s one of the downsides. There is no universal RAW format,” he said, adding that the photos also require more massaging and work on behalf of the user.
Three times the charm for image back up
On backing up images, Thapa recommended storing them on a computer, a Drobo system and online using a website called SmugVault. The Drobo system is a device that chains together multiple hard drives, caching the information so that if one hard drive fails, it saves the information using the others.
“All the hard drives get consolidated, and any data that gets stored in there gets stored redundantly over those multiple drives,” he said.
However, a third backup is essential. That’s where SmugVault, which allows users to upload virtually unlimited amounts of data, comes into play. “If [the image] doesn’t exist in three places, it’s not really backed up,” he concluded.