To CD or NOT to CD

After reading a wonderful article from www.shootsmarter.com (Free membership if interested) by photographer William Innes about how "Shoot and Burn" is bad for the customer as well as the photographer got me thinking about what can happen after you receive you image CD.

So you paid the photographer for the CD of the images he/she photographed of your portraits or wedding.  You are so happy you will have this cd forever.  Plus you can just load the CD onto your computer where they will be safe.  "Oh NO!!! I got a virus and my computer is now junk!" or maybe this scenario "Hun, have you seen the CD of our wedding photographs?"  Did you backup your wedding or portrait photographs ... maybe or I didn't think about doing that.  You try to contact the photographer and you get a message like "I'm sorry the number you dialed is no longer in service."

One more item to consider " We will march right over to the discount drug store and then we will have prints made" The prints being only 29 cents each is a real deal you cannot pass up.  You may end up with a print like the one on the right in this image.

Just think of all the money you DIDN'T spend on the prints/album the photographer would have charged you.
Did you ever think that someday your grandchildren or maybe great great grandchildren may want to know who you were and what you looked like?

The print above has been around for many years and is still in good shape for as old as it is.

One more thing I was thinking.  Wow we had a grand reception and it cost us $20,000 but we really saved when the photographer sold us a CD of images for $500.

Point taken is your full time photographer will use a professional lab to produce your prints for you and you will not get images with that are off color or just plain terrible.  Prints are made to last for years but a CD, according to some testing labs say, the data on a CD will last 2-3 years at the most.
Ref: http://www.audioholics.com/education/audio-formats-technology/cd-and-dvd-longevity-how-long-will-they-last

The Story behind JPEG's  


If you get JPEG's from your photographer and down the road you want to do some of your own adjustments or creative input on your photographs bear this in mind.  JPEG's are compressed and how are they compressed.  As soon as the shutter closes the computer in your camera will compress the image by removing some of the information that it DOESN'T THINK it needs.  Some of that information is color and some other unnecessary information.  You take the JPEG and do some work on it of your own and you save the photograph.  You just lost some more information because the computer again throw out some of the information contained in the image that it doesn't think it needs thus destroying the image bit by bit.  So opening and re-saving a JPEG does more harm than good.  Any good photographer will either use RAW or TIFF format when taking your photographs which are uncompressed files then give you JPEG's for your use.


Video - JPEG deterioration after re-saving many times.


Solutions


The best idea for you when planning on having any type of photograph taken is to purchase prints from the photographer.  If the photographer gives you prints that are not of your satisfaction you have the right to take them back and demand to get them corrected.  Most professional labs will reprint for the photographer any image that is not color correct or has been damaged by the lab at no charge.  If the photographer is at fault then he/she must make the corrections and then resubmit the image for printing which will cost them to have it reprinted.  Most professional photographers will have their computer screen calibrated for correct color and the digital files should match what the lab prints.


If you do get a CD from your photographer it is wise to backup the CD to an off site location.  Somewhere different then your home or computer.  There are many off-site locations on the web but do some research on the site before uploading.

The only other important part is natural disasters like fire or storm damage.  These instances are not your fault or the photographers.  If the photographer is still in business and has archived your images then you are in luck but most photographers will not keep files over a certain amount of time.  It might be wise to have either extra prints made and give to family members to keep.

So the next time you think you saved a lot of money going the cheaper route think again to what could happen in the future with the investment you put into your photographs.