From: "Hal V. Engel" <hvengel@xxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2005 14:09:29 -0800 You can add me to the list. I also leave my originals alone. As you=20 say this is just good photographic practice. I have negatives that=20 are almost 70 years old that are in nearly new condition that I got=20 from my fathers photo collection before he died and I have my own=20 collection of negatives and slides that goes back about 45 years. All=20 have been carefully stored and are only touched to make=20 "copies" (digital now days). My brother is a professional=20 photographer and he also leaves his digital originals alone and only=20 edits copies. I am sure that there are others on this list that also=20 agree but have not said so on the list. In any case I don't see any=20 reason to not do the same with digital originals.=20 It occurred to me that there's another reason not to change so much as a single bit of images: the ability to verify that an original is indeed an original. Some cameras, such as the Canon EOS 1D Mark II, are capable of signing the image, so that it can be verified that the image is unmodified. See http://consumer.usa.canon.com/ir/controller?act=ModelFeaturesAct&fcategoryid=139&modelid=9808#f3. Changing the image in the slightest -- including a lossless rotation -- would destroy this signature. Someone with this camera who needs to be able to verify photographs (perhaps because they're being used as evidence in court) could not use exiftran. Someone may want to preserve that signature, while still editing the photograph and saving it under a different name. The basic point here is that changes to the original digital file are *irreversible*, no matter how minor one thinks they may be. Photographers don't like making even the smallest irreversible changes to their master images, for good reason. I've given a specific reason, in addition to the general reason. Please don't do anything that makes life difficult for photographers who wish to perfectly preserve their originals! -- Robert Krawitz <rlk@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Tall Clubs International -- http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2 Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- mail lpf@xxxxxxxxxxxx Project lead for Gimp Print -- http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works." --Eric Crampton
