will our digital images become useless in the future? fhotoace please answer.?

Question

I don't know about you, but I always think in the back of my head that what am I gonna do the day our digital images become useless. by useless i mean the format. the most common formats these days are jpeg and tiff, will there ever come a day when no application or devise will be able to read them? I mean, look at VCD's, they are no longer produced as wide as before, and come blu-ray's, the same thing will happen to DVDs. what if for say, ten years from now, all the cameras save in a new format, and jpeg's will fade, what will happen to our pics today? Should I be worried, or just laugh at my ignorance? Is what I'm saying possible?

Answer 1

Shucks, I'm not fhotace, so I'm not invited to answer this one :-(



ETA (after I got an email to tell me that yes, I am allowed to answer, too):



I think you may be right. Eventually there will be other formats, hopefully better ones.

However, due to the incredibly huge number of existing files, the process of change will be very slow and gradual. Existing files will still be usable LONG after the new ones start becoming accepted.



I also think there will be a lot of help (software etc) to convert the files in the most painless manner possible.



So yes, it could and possibly will happen. It will be a nuisance, too, but do-able.

This is nothing I am willing to lose sleep over at this point, no use in worrying over something that "might be" some day.

Answer 2

You're confusing physical media with file format. Popular image formats, like jpg, tiff, png, ..., will probably be supported for quite some time. There is no economic reason to change formats since companies don't own the various formats (there was some issue with jpeg, but haven't heard much about that lately; gif was killed by png when Compuserve started to make noise). If not, then you can convert the file format to something modern. Things that might not be supported are manufacturer specific formats like the various camera proprietary raw formats. However, there will be programs written by third parties that will deal with the old stuff like DCRAW which will convert almost any raw file to tiff, Nconvert which will convert a huge variety of image formats to another format, or ffmpeg which will convert a huge variety of video formats to another format. All the above programs are free programs that do more than most, perhaps all, payware programs.



Physical media like CD; DVD; Bluray; LaserDisc; 8", 5.25", 3.5" floppies; ST-506 interface hard drives are or will go out of style. Partially due to technical advances, creating new markets to obsolete your present equipment, and trying to prevent duplication (all duplication prevention techniques have failed so far). However, there is always a transition period where you can transfer the contents of unprotected media to a different format. I've done that with data on my 8", 5.25" and 3.5" floppies, optical drives, and old ST-506 hard drives.



I would worry more about your computer operating system becoming useless and won't support your camera specific raw file format because you can't run your old software on a newer OS.

Answer 3

There will come a day when these file types are no longer used but there will be an easy way to convert them to the latest standard file types.



Much like film. All film today can be scanned into a computer. Before digital people had 8mm movie film transfered to VCR tapes. You can now have VCR tapes trasfered to DVD or Blue Ray. The same will be true with whatever file types we use in the future.



Because it is already digital it will probably be easier to do as well. People will be able to transfer their Jpeg and Tiff files cheaply and easily at home on their computers.

Answer 4

The fact that a format is superseded does not necessarily mean it will disappear. Take your example the VCD, pop one of these discs into your DVD player or you Blu-Ray player and what happens; they will happily play.



When it comes to our photos, there are already a large number of formats, not all in common use, what's remained the same are the basic bog standard bit map formats. Why, well they can adapt to various bit depths, sizes and most of all they are loss-less. That last item is important, if you want to preserve your images you need to store them in a loss-less format, and make sure you have multiple usable backups!



I guess what I'm saying is, you shouldn't be relying on JPEGs anyway!

Answer 5

The only thing constant is change! Images of the future may be mental rather than visual. Books may still be around, but we could be replaced by computers that don't read books or view digital images.



This answer may seem a little "Fuzzy," but the base two system used in digital images could be replaced by fuzzy logic - a mathematical system that analyzes analog input values in terms of logical variables that take on continuous values between 0 and 1, in contrast to classical or digital logic, which operates on discrete values of either 0 and 1 (true and false).



A specific example, Canon developed an autofocusing camera that uses a charge-coupled device (CCD) to measure the clarity of the image in six regions of its field of view and use the information provided to determine if the image is in focus. It also tracks the rate of change of lens movement during focusing, and controls its speed to prevent overshoot.



The camera's fuzzy control system uses 12 inputs: 6 to obtain the current clarity data provided by the CCD and 6 to measure the rate of change of lens movement. The output is the position of the lens. The fuzzy control system uses 13 rules and requires 1.1 kilobytes of memory.

Answer 6

After the inevitable coming Apocalypse, mankind will use tree bark as currency. Wealth will be measured in the amount of unexpired, unopened aspirin bottles one possesses.

There will be no digital imaging.