I think that's a really shallow way to look at it. For a professional photographer it's the final version of the file that is actually sold, not the RAW or film negative. These final files are often not some 300x200 web preview. These are full sized images. You can argue the final edit has more value and is the one to preserve. Ansel Adams broke the process down into 3 parts with the initial capture being but the first. So losing the final edits is losing 66% of the total work.

I'm only a hobbyist photog and the bday parties and weddings I've shot result in thousands of images. I can't imagine having to shoot multiple events every week for years. For a pro, the edits represent thousands of hours of work. That the work can be redone theoretically might mean very little to a working photographer.

> For a pro, the edits represent thousands of hours of work. That the work can be redone theoretically might mean very little to a working photographer.

This is exactly the issue I had in mind, well said.

My wife shoots weddings. A wedding lasts an hour, the reception maybe three or four. She’ll spend the better part of a week editing the whole event.

Raw images seem to be very important until the very moment they’ve been edited (or, hell, rejected from editing). Then their worth is very little.

Some images require hours of painstaking editing. There are some photographers who will spend days or more editing an image. The edited image is as much an instantaneous snapshot of the photographer as it is the scene in front of the lens. Looking at my Darktable catalog, it is easy to estimate that I spend at least 250 hr/yr editing images.

Raw files, and sidecars, retain their value because sometimes one wishes to revisit an image/edit. If I had to pick one or the other, I might prefer to lose the edited images. That is because I believe I have more/better days of my editing life ahead of me and because I underestimate how much editing I have done. Moreover, there are plenty of RAW images awaiting the day they come to life.

In commercial work, like weddings, the final product is the edit. If there is one thing that must be retained, that is it.