File formats for saving "original" photos -- Part Two

In my previouspost on this subject, I covered some of my experiences with gettinginto digital cameras. The point of that discussion was that the fileformat used to store digital images depends on the availability of thoseformats both from the hardware (the camera or scanner) and thesoftware. Before I can discuss this further, I need a few definitions.First of all are the terms lossless or lossy. A lossless image file issaved with a compression algorithm that does not discard informationobtained from the camera. In contrast, a lossy algorithm allows imagedegradation (loss of information) to achieve a smaller file size. Justfor clarity, an "algorithm" is a programming term referring to a preciseset of rules specifying how to solve a particular problem.

To put that into plain language, some types of image file formatspreserve all of the original information from the camera and some tradeoff a smaller file size for a loss of some information. Now this concernabout file size made sense when computers and storage devices (i.e.hard drives, flash drives etc.) were small and expensive. It takes ahuge amount of storage to save all of the information from even onecamera image, much less tens or hundreds or even thousands. However, Iam going to focus on the present hardware and software issues, not thoseoccuring even five years ago (or even one year ago). Computers havebecome much faster and storage has become almost incredibly inexpensive.

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File formats for saving "original" photos -- Part Two

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