A system and method for automatically determine whether an image captured by a digital camera should be stored in a raw format or a compressed format. After an image is captured by the digital camera, the digital camera checks certain sets of characteristics of the captured image to check the image quality. If the image quality falls within an acceptable range, then the digital camera saves the image in a compressed format. If the captured image does not fall within predetermined quality levels, then the captured image is save in raw format for later processing.