AFTER Focus-stacking: What do you do with the series?

[FlyingSquirrel]

For those of you that do a lot of focus stacking images, I was curious what you do with the series of captures AFTER you create the final, single, stacked image?

I have, probably, thousands of captures in Lightroom (series of images captured for stacking purposes). Until now, after I create a finished PSD file, I have still kept the grouped series of initial captures. I was just thinking, perhaps I should delete those files. They are taking up A LOT of disk space (and by association, backup disk space), yet are not really serving any purpose; after all, I've created the desired final image.

Then again, I thought, what if there was a new technology or algorithm for stacking, sometime in the future, and I wanted to 're-stack' the series for better results. Or maybe just reprocess the individual images before stacking, for a different result. Then, from that thought, I decided that I know myself too well, and would probably never do this. The files will likely just sit there, forever, taking up space. Well, anyway, those are my thoughts. I'm curious what you all do with your captures.

Thanks

[Kodiak]

•
I have cumulated many folders that all have this structure

A Shoot ID ƒ containing 3 sub folders:
• Captured RAWs ƒ including its subfolders
• Converted images ƒ containing image files from converter, ready to stack
• Stacked image file ƒ containing the stacks and all PP works of all variants, each in own sub ƒ.

With this system, it is always possible to come back at any point (after capture)
to reprocess or else.

The draw back, since everything is captures with the D800E, an immense
data bank that has its own RAID backup.

[benm]

I save everything. Storage is cheap. Just make sure you have set up your system to be able to find an old file. If you don't know you have it, it's like not having it.

[DanK]

I almost always save the raw files, thinking that I might want to stack differently another time, although the fact is I almost never have. I virtually never save the intermediate TIFF files that I actually stack, since it is completely trivial to regenerate them in exactly the same form from Lightroom.

One exception is that if I am not certain that I am going to be satisfied with the stack, I will tell Zerene to save the project, which saves everything:

Saving a “project” in Zerene Stacker lets you leave the program, then quickly get back in and resume working where you left off. A project contains links to the input images, values of alignment and brightness adjustments for each input image, copies of the output images stored in a proprietary lossless format suitable for subsequent processing, and most of the Options > Preferences settings that were in effect at the time the project was saved.

Once I know which composite I want, I get rid of all of that.

[FlyingSquirrel]

Cool, thanks for the help, guys!

[IzzieK]

I have the same thinking as Ben - storage is cheap so keep them all from raw to processed to finished product -- you'll never know when you'll be needing those again, sometimes or most of the time, not need it...but then I am a hoarder -- of files that is...I just need to manage mine a little bit better -- maybe tagging them better...

[rudi]

Normally I keep all the initial captures, simply because I think my stacking skills are still improving....From my older stuff I only keep the final, just for the record to see how and iff my photography is improving or not....

[dennybeall]

Just came in from work and noticed I'd left a terabyte drive in my shirt pocket. Need I say more?

[Wayland]

I keep all my RAW files.

Mostly they do just take up space but as mentioned, hard drive space is cheap these days. Just make sure you know where it is and have backups. (I have a pile of 1TB HDDs sitting on my shelves in storage boxes and others with critical files stored off site.)

In many cases it would cost me more in fuel to travel back to just one of these locations in the vain hope of recreating an image than it costs for a HDD to safely store thousands of them.

Over the last few years both my photography and my PP has improved. But I would have to say my PP has improved more and with the parallel improvements in software that has been a compelling reason to revisit some of my older images.

I can think of several occasions when I have returned to my original RAW files to re-render a promising image using up to date conversion software for startlingly improved results.

I recently retuned to re-examine many of my layered masters with similar results too.

Your choice, but for the sake of a few pennies worth of hard drive space, why take the risk?