Working with digital images

[Tek-69]

---First let me say, I'm new and love the site, it's exactly what I was looking for. Now lets get down to brass tax.
---I've been reading on the web and on this board that I should be saving my digital originals and working from copies. I actually was already doing this on my own, but I'm starting to get confused because if I understand correctly, I shouldn't use .jpg for my originals. Trouble is .jpg is the only option my nikon coolpix L3 will save as. Should I leave them as .jpg's because of this or should I convert them after downloading from the digicam? If I should convert them what format would be best, keeping in mind I want to keep my exif data intact.
---I know similar questions have been asked, but I'm still very new, and am feeling a little hazy about this, any clarification and/or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. :)

[Mike54]

Hello Tek-69 and welcome to the Q&A Board.

Each time a jpg is opened and saved it will lose a bit of quality due to compression. Generally you should save the original right from the camera and if you need to do a little "work" on it do so but save it in a different folder or with a new name so as not to overwrite the original. You can convert the jpg to another file format but it won't improve the image and if you're already in the habit of working on copies of the images why change your work flow? Besides, if you were to convert to tif (for example) your "copy" will be considerable larger (file size) than the original.

[ShutterbugGail]

So pleased you like the site and find it helpful.

As Mike mentioned, work on a copy of your originals. Here is some information about preserving exif data. Each program is a little different so check the help files.

www.digicamhelp.com/processing-photos/basic-editing/preserve-exif.php

Let us know if you have other questions.

[Tek-69]

Thanks for responding and the for providing the link, I appreciate it.