File formats for saving "original" photos -- Part Two

In my previous
post on this subject, I covered some of my experiences with getting
into digital cameras. The point of that discussion was that the file
format used to store digital images depends on the availability of those
formats both from the hardware (the camera or scanner) and the
software. Before I can discuss this further, I need a few definitions.
First of all are the terms lossless or lossy. A lossless image file is
saved with a compression algorithm that does not discard information
obtained from the camera. In contrast, a lossy algorithm allows image
degradation (loss of information) to achieve a smaller file size. Just
for clarity, an "algorithm" is a programming term referring to a precise
set of rules specifying how to solve a particular problem.

To put that into plain language, some types of image file formats
preserve all of the original information from the camera and some trade
off a smaller file size for a loss of some information. Now this concern
about file size made sense when computers and storage devices (i.e.
hard drives, flash drives etc.) were small and expensive. It takes a
huge amount of storage to save all of the information from even one
camera image, much less tens or hundreds or even thousands. However, I
am going to focus on the present hardware and software issues, not those
occuring even five years ago (or even one year ago). Computers have
become much faster and storage has become almost incredibly inexpensive.

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