Should I get rid of my jpegs in Lightroom ??

tonybassplayer

tonybassplayer

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Name
Tony
Edit My Images
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I'm on a mission to tidy up my MacBook pro and get rid of anything I no longer need to free up hard drive space and realised that for the last year or so since starting to use RAW files I have also been importing the jpegs too ( not sure where I got the advice to shoot both but it seemed like good advice at the time and may still be )

Is there any real reason for me keeping them ? and if not is there an easy way to dispense of them ?

Many thanks

Tony
 
Do you use them? If not, there is no point in keeping them.

Actually, the same goes for the Raw files.
 
Yes delete the jpegs, but if you're using Lightroom, make sure you do it within the programme.
 
No I don't use them as I just process the raw files so I'm not really sure why it was recommended that I had my camera set up to do raw and jpeg

Could you explain how to "do it within the programme" ? I'm not sure what that means.

Many thanks.
 
It doesn't really matter where you delete them from but doing it from within LR (assuming they're catalogued - right click -> remove photos -> delete from disk) means you won't have lots of folders with 'no destination' errors. These can be cleaned up afterwards.

Lots of people shoot raw + JPG and there are a few reasons. Often beginners do so when they are worried about their PP skills, others do it as they generally use the JPGs and then when something needs serious PP they use the raw.
 
If you shoot RAW then process them in Lightroom you have the ability to export the processed image as a JPEG if you want to use them outside of LR.
No point in shooting RAW + JPEG, if you are going to process RAW files.
If you have two cards you could shoot RAW to one, and JPEG to the other purely as a back up.
 
mickledore said:
If you shoot RAW then process them in Lightroom you have the ability to export the processed image as a JPEG if you want to use them outside of LR.
No point in shooting RAW + JPEG, if you are going to process RAW files.
If you have two cards you could shoot RAW to one, and JPEG to the other purely as a back up.
Click to expand...

It's useful to RAW and JPG with Fuji cameras specifically as it gives you the ability to zoom in further when reviewing images. No point keeping them afterwards if you always process the RAWs though.
 
Nawty said:
It doesn't really matter where you delete them from but doing it from within LR (assuming they're catalogued - right click -> remove photos -> delete from disk) means you won't have lots of folders with 'no destination' errors. These can be cleaned up afterwards.

Lots of people shoot raw + JPG and there are a few reasons. Often beginners do so when they are worried about their PP skills, others do it as they generally use the JPGs and then when something needs serious PP they use the raw.
Click to expand...

I shoot raw + jpeg, but I do it because my camera has two memory cards, saw raw onto the CF, jpeg onto the SD card. I started it partially as backup easons, just in case the CF card failed, but when shooting sunday morning youth rugby, I'd shoot smalljpeg onto the SD card as I could then import them quickly onto an ipad on the walk to the clubhouse for display next to my website cards. Rollng display gave people an idea, took a card, downloaded image from my website. Small charge per image helped fund our youth team for many years
 
Byker28i said:
I shoot raw + jpeg, but I do it because my camera has two memory cards, saw raw onto the CF, jpeg onto the SD card. I started it partially as backup easons, just in case the CF card failed, but when shooting sunday morning youth rugby, I'd shoot smalljpeg onto the SD card as I could then import them quickly onto an ipad on the walk to the clubhouse for display next to my website cards. Rollng display gave people an idea, took a card, downloaded image from my website. Small charge per image helped fund our youth team for many years
Click to expand...


Yep, those are two other good reasons :)

(which reminds me I need a backup card for my upcoming holiday - normally I just use 1 card).
 
So the thing with jpegs inside lightroom. If these are the ones you've edited then keep them, they'll have the edits recorded against them as metadata so exported image is the original file plus metadata of changes.
If they are just duplicates then you can remove.

If you go into lightroom, library module, select all photos, then use the Metadata search attribute, you can either add a column or change one of the columns to be filetype, from which you can select jpeg to highlight all the jpegs

upload_2017-10-22_10-10-3.png


Got to say, for me the library module is one of the most powerful aspects of Lightroom with it's abilities often overlooked.
 
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When given a single image as both raw and jpg files lightroom will typically only show you one image and will record and perform all edits against the raw file. You can force it to consider them to be separate images but that would be your choice. If you've done that then obviously you take responsibility for deciding which one to edit and which one to keep.
 
Byker28i said:
So the thing with jpegs inside lightroom. If these are the ones you've edited then keep them, they'll have the edits recorded against them as metadata so exported image is the original file plus metadata of changes.
If they are just duplicates then you can remove.

If you go into lightroom, library module, select all photos, then use the Metadata search attribute, you can either add a column or change one of the columns to be filetype, from which you can select jpeg to highlight all the jpegs

View attachment 113011


Got to say, for me the library module is one of the most powerful aspects of Lightroom with it's abilities often overlooked.
Click to expand...

Thanks for this advice. Just had a look myself and found out some really useful information about my most used F stops, focal lengths etc.
 
I shoot RAW & jpeg just because it gives me more options. Most of my photos are more interesting snaps than serious efforts at high quality photography. Most of those I simply process with a few quick tweaks to the jpeg, and then downsize for social media display or printing on up to 5"x7" ish. Only serious efforts or difficult images get processed from RAW. I can't be bothered to delete anything since it's so cheap these days to buy another terabyte or few of USB disc storage. My guess is that the extra cost of saving everything in terms of purchased terabytes is less than the time and botheration I would suffer trying to decide what to delete. I keep no more than the last few months of images that I'm still processing on my computer's internal drives.
 
Highlight all the JPEGS.
Mark them with 'X' on the keyboard.
CMD + Delete
Then you will have an will remove them from the hard disk and LR will not look for them.


I used to shoot RAW and JPEG, but now only RAW, and that is what is imported into LR.
 
You should probably review why you are shooting both. Some people do this so they have a version that can be used immediately, or an instant backup that doesn't take up much space, or they have a customer that requires an unmanipulated in-camera file (some news organisations and competitions). Another reason is to take advantage of the camera's own image processing mojo. Sometimes (especially with certain brands like Fuji), the in-camera jpeg can look better than the output of some third party raw processors, at least without quite a bit of work. Are you happy with the Lightroom output and, if you do direct comparisons, do you always prefer the jpeg that LR generates to the in-camera jpeg? If not, you might want to keep the jpegs either for reference in tweaking the raw conversion, or to use directly.
 
I can only think that I was recommended to shoot both when I switched to raw.

I now feel confident to stop doing that and back track through to isolate the jpegs I haven’t used on my hard drive.

I am assuming they will look quite different to any raw files that have been edited and then publishedon social media or Flickr etc as I guess these are now jpegs too ?
 
If you want to make comparisons, the best way is to look at a jpeg straight out of the camera, and another that has been converted from raw to jpeg by LR but is still on your computer (once you upload to a social media site, the site itself might apply further processing). It's not so much the jpeg format that makes the difference (a high quality jpeg will look very much like a tiff on your screen), but rather the choices the raw converter makes when 'developing' the raw file before you save the jpeg. If you compare an in-camera jpeg with a Lightroom conversion from raw to jpeg, even without any editing, you'll probably see subtle (or not so subtle) differences in colour and (e.g.) the way that noise and highlights are handled. You might find the LR jpeg better or worse, depending to some extent on what camera you are shooting, and various camera and LR settings (like the camera profile). If you're completely happy with what LR is doing, and have no other reason to shoot jpeg, then it's safe it shoot raw alone. I rarely shoot anything other than raw (though I generally use non-Adobe raw converters).
 
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