Digital Records

I read with interest the post on 'lightfastness'. That prompted this post. I moved house 10 years ago and dumped a lot of paintings before the move. I regretted this and vowed to at least take photos of pictures I discard. My son doesn't want me to throw anything away, but he doesn't realize how much I have...I suspect he'll rely on the photographic record on my computer. (All this regarding my pictures is no big deal, and of interest only to me and my family, but I suspect a lot of us keep this kind of record.) A couple of odd things have happened on my personal digital front just lately. I tried to look at some old jpeg images on a back-up disc. Windows and Photoshop on my computer didn't recognize the format. Jpeg??? Oddly enough the 'paint' app did, so I was able to save them in another format. A similar thing happened with some old movie files I had (Super 8 film transferred to AVI format). They wouldn't play either, luckily I found a free conversion tool and was able to save them as MP4 movie files (the latest format). It makes you wonder if you need to re-save all your image files to keep them up-to-date. The AVI movie format is still in use, but clearly has changed since I made my old copies. I love having a computer, it's like having a vast art library in your home. But the art images are often not very accurate, I'm sure you've noticed that. A couple of years back I copied a favorite Manet painting. I looked for a decent copy on the internet...there were masses of them. But my image search showed an astonishing range of colour values, and others appeared cropped. Some were too blue, too yellow, too green...I picked the one most resembling my hazy memories of the original painting. Again no big deal, but we need to remember we're not always looking at a true representation. As you can't always see the originals, it's better than nothing. When I photograph my pictures I try to check the colours aren't too wayward. To illustrate this, I've stuck a picture by Rowlandson (a favorite of mine). It's from his wonderful 'Miseries of Travel' series. It's dated 1807. On the left is as obtained from the internet, or the right it's as tweaked by me, to enhance the colours, in photoshop. This was a watercolour...or rather a black and white print that had been hand coloured. The thing that reassures me about the real thing, is the way paintings do last. I've been looking at some contemporary egg tempera paintings. I've always had the quaint notion that this medium wouldn't be durable. Eggs?? In fact they are extremely durable, many bright egg tempera paintings date back to ancient Egyptian times. Oils seem almost indestructible. Maybe Acrylic will prove the same. Only watercolour seems less reliable, but at least they last - even in a faded state, and nothing beats looking at an original work. The real stuff...oils etc...has staying power. Digital art is the coming thing, I wonder if it will prove as durable. But I suppose all this is only of academic interest to an old boy like me. I just enjoy making pictures.

Thanks for the tip about VLC, Robert. I've downloaded it and it plays sound of my ancient avi format movies. I must save them in an up-to-date format, avi usage makes for very large files. VLC says it plays ZIP files without opening them first...that's handy. I was puzzled by the JPEGS not being playable, it was only a few, others on the same back disc were fine. Some kind of glitch, I suppose...they weren't corrupted when I did open them in PAINT. Pat's comment about restoring files seems very valid...quite a task though.

Pat, I think I'm sorry I read the NY times article, at one point it says digital records may not last 10 years, let alone into the far future. Thankfully, that's not been the case for me, much of my 'archive' of pictures and movies is over 40 years old, and so far I've only had problems with a few bits and bobs. The VLC player is playing my more archaic movies. By accident, I seem to be doing some of the things mentioned in the article. I have a backup external drive. My method for keeping it up-to-date is to delete folders in the back-up drive, rather than just adding new bits, and then re-copy the relevant folder from my PC in it's entirety. The computer can do this without my attention. But this isn't saving files in up-to-date formats. I think I'll tell my son, if he wants to save my stuff, he'd better keep the actual paintings. This thing is a right can of worms. Who brought it up?

The thing I like about these posts, and conversation in general, is that they veer off in different directions. I'm about to add to that. Sorry. I thought I was being a cleverclogs in saving my pictures digitally. (This was on the suggestion of my son, remember...it will be of small interest to me.) Now it seems it's not so clever after all. I get John's comment about the JPEG format. I knew about it, and conducted my own little experiment with a Photoshop picture I'd made. Photoshop allows you to save your picture in layers, and alpha channels (bits of the picture you've selected to make life easier). This Photoshop file format is known as PSD. It makes for a large file. My experiment was with a relatively simple painting (shown below, if you're interested). As a PSD file it's 49.9mb, as a TIFF it's 54.3, as a BMP it's 20.3, as a PNG it's 4.71, and as a JPEG it's 2.22mb. As far as file size goes, I can ignore TIFF, I might as well save it as a PSD. PNG and JPEG seem the best file size options. PNG is supposed to be good for text and drawings...so that's an option. But if I used it instead of JPEG, my picture library would more than DOUBLE in size. Which is a consideration. Jpeg is a loss format...you lose stuff to allow for the greater compression of file size. In practice, I work in PSD, and when I'm finished, save it as a JPEG and delete the PSD (after a while, just in case.) One of the things JPEGs loses is 'some' of the colour. It's an established medical fact that we don't all see colour in the same way. Another can of worms...let's not go there. Recently, I've made two PHOTO BOOKs, and had them printed. One was a traditional family photo album, the other a set of photo manipulations I did as a joke present last year. I was very impressed with the quality of the books. (I'd been skeptical.) ' You should do that with your paintings', said another son. Why, I thought...I've got the paintings AND the digital record? Now, I'm thinking that's what I'll do. It costs money, of course. You download a compiler from the company (in my case Bonusprint), and take your time putting it together (a very good app, by the way). When it's finished, you wait for the company to 'make an offer', then have it printed. My photo-manip book cost £27 with a 50% discount. £27 is about the cost of a set of water-colour paints. So, if you have any interest in saving your body of work, it might be a option.

You're right about PSDs, John. I've still got a few, the unfinished one I showed was for an image I went off the boil on...happens often. But I keep oddments like that, just in case. I don't do much digital stuff now, on occasion I'll use it for text on a drawing and in small ways like that. But you never know. I have deleted PSDs in the past when I'd convinced myself they were finished. My reference to disc space was more aimed at my photo and movie archive (family stuff mostly + a few animations). I also have a large library of art that I like, which I suppose is outside this discussion as the source material is invariably JPEG anyway.

Clearly I've given the wrong idea about space. I have plenty. I made the remarks about Jpegs because their small file size has made them more or less universal. Jpegs are here to stay. My camera, perfectly good for my purposes, downloads to my PC in jpeg format. (It doesn't give me other options). So any drawings I import to use in photoshop, start with a jpeg source, whatever format I save them in. My little experiment with the drawing I posted looks the same to me in all the formats I mentioned. My initial post was about losing old images and videos, until I got a back up drive, I'd save on CDs....it's mostly files from those that have become unplayable or corrupted. I've learn a few things here...some thirty-odd year old family video (avi) files wouldn't play...they do on the VCL player. I've had a few image losses, so have others. Backing up onto a hard drive regularly seems the right thing to do. (I was already doing it). I do look at Pinterest, but rarely have problems finding resource material. I don't want to blow this up and of proportion...it's not a big, big, problem. By and large I'm happy with the system, I've had a few glitches, but that seems to be part of the game. I think I'm as sorted as I can be. Thanks to everyone.

Drat, Syd, you've found another flaw in my argument. I give in.