Preserving digital imagery

When (if ever) will camera makers agree to open up their proprietary RAW formats? And how can we ensure our digital photos will be readable 5, 50 or 500 years from now?

Jeff Schewe writes:

[...] digital photography is at serious risk. Why? Undocumented, proprietary raw file formats. While some may argue that there are file formats available that do mitigate the risks, those file formats, such as JPG or TIFF, do not provide a format for the storage of the unprocessed raw sensor data. But it is the original raw sensor data that we need to preserve because as we’ve seen in just a few short years, the software for processing the raw data has improved considerably. With digital photography, we have the unprecedented situation that original raw captures will actually improve over time because the software and algorithms to decode and access the raw data will improve over time.

See also:
How To Preserve Photos For 500 Years
10 Ways to Make Your Digital Photos Last Forever

This entry was posted by Christoph, on June 26, 2006. You can leave your response.