Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/05/01
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Bits last forever. Pictures don't. If you have a piece of paper in your hand, with pretty pictures on it, that paper is subject to decay, washout, fading, and so forth. Regardless of how the image got on it. If you have a digital representation of a picture, then it will still be the same a thousand years from now. And you can print it out on whatever technology is available then. Yes, there are media issues having to do with long-term storage, but when you copy a digital image, the copy is perfect, so there is no loss of image quality there. When you copy a visual image (paper or film) the copy is not perfect, so you lose image quality. Digital is the only sensible way to store images. Bits last forever.