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Ok so i'm new to all this photography, i,v been admiring lots of photos by the members here and one thing keeps croping up. Each stunning photo i see of landscapes show the picture to be shot in RAW , i have looked up RAW and as i understand it these files are used because they can be changed later unlike Jpeg files which most pictures are taken in. My question is why are these pictures taken in RAW and how do people change the picture later.
RAW is the unaltered data captured by the camera. The picture you see on the review screen is an embedded jpeg that uses the preset you select from the camera menus.
If you decide to use jpeg the camera sets saturation, sharpness contrast white balance etc etc. you can edit a jpeg but you lose quality with each adjustment.
For RAW you will need a way to "develop" it so you will need a RAW converter. There often a good free one that comes with the camera. Alternatively use Lightroom ( my choice) Adobe camera raw (embedded in Photoshop, Elements), captureone, capture NX2 (Nikon only).
To start I would advice using the one that comes with the camera, you can then use the same preset as you have in camera. It will be easy to revert if you make a mistake. Always save the final conversion in a lossless format , Tiff or PSD (my choice).
Then experiment hangs white balance, increase temperature to warm the image, decrease to cool. For tint - figures give a greener hue, +magenta/violet.
Only do minimum sharpening in the RAW converter ( some recommend none, but I personally favour a very small amount for technical reasons which I won't go into now as it complicates things). Play with levels and curves, be gentle save any big changes for photoshop where you can be more selective.
The best advice I could give is switch the camera to RAW now, leave it there you will soon master it and wont look back.
I used to shoot in jpeg and i only shoot in raw now and have done for the last few years it is easy to get to grips with and you have all the control over your image.
I have not looked back works for me.
There is only one time i use jpeg and that's when i use bracketing for HDR or panoramas and only because the files are huge and they will slow the processing down.
Ian even for these (HDR and pano) you should use RAW. JPEGs are only 8 bit HDR is 32 bit ( for the tone mapping) you are throwing away a lot of info the tone mapping uses. In fact there probably as much dynamic range in 1 RAW file as 3 JPEGs 2 stops apart. You can get banding (caused by the upsizing from 8bit to 32bit - which is a much bigger step than 14/16 bit to 32) and much more noise, caused by the sharpening of the jpeg file in camera. The contrast curve used in camera can also cause problems (throwing away even more info from the dark and light areas, also causing more noise in the shadows).
Similarly with panos, you can make minor corrections to the RAW file to correct distortions, vignetting etc (you sometimes seen as dark patches in the sky with panos - this is vignetting from the individual images). Just copy the settings from one RAW to the next (same applies for HDR).
I shoot raw and jpeg.
My jpegs are only used to view images as a slide show in their folder on the pc cos they are quicker on my set up.
One thing that is seldom mentioned with jpegs is possibly their worst trait....if you open and modify a jpeg it is compressed when you save the work, this is what jpegs are about....it happens every time you open, modify and save so unless you keep the original and save as a copy your precious original could it time be rendered useless.
This is not something an experienced digital worker would fall foul of but in the early stages it needs to be noted.
Enjoy your camera(s) ....best of luck....stuart
Quote: One thing that is seldom mentioned with jpegs is possibly their worst trait....if you open and modify a jpeg it is compressed when you save the work, this is what jpegs are about....it happens every time you open, modify and save so unless you keep the original and save as a copy your precious original could it time be rendered useless.
You can get over that by converting to TIFF and working on that. Although that is useful for pictures where you only have the jpeg, if you are doing that you as routine you may as well shoot RAW (or RAW+JPG).
The beauty of raw files is you will always have the info and the ability to get the best from it as long as you keep the original. This is one of the over all joys of digital....its very difficult to return to a poor film image and lift it...also as your technique improves you can revisit your earlier shots and re work them. stuart
This was an interesting read for me. Would any experienced raw shooters give a few examples of what you'd typically do to your raw images? For different situations? Some examples: candid pictures at a social event/party, for sunrise or sunsets, for city photography, for grey days where the sky is a blanket of white?
I haven't got any samples to hand at the moment but a very good place to start is the manufacturer's own RAW conversion.
I have Canon cameras and when I set a camera style in the camera, the RAW converter (Digital Photo Professional) picks this up and applies it to the RAW image so waht I see on the screen is what the camera would output as a JPEG. So when I open in DPP I can swee how Canon chooses to edit it and start learning from there.
So why do this if the image is the same as shooting JPEG? The difference is that the RAW converter is doing some of the 'manual' controls automatically and I can reverse them with no detrimental effect on image quality. So I can also change things more drastically if I wish (change the colour temperature, or add sharpening or do local changes) . And if I have used the wrong camera setting by accident it is easily correctable in RAW.
I have now used Faststone afew times and played with the settings, it is so much better than using the " silkypix" which came with my Pentax. It strikes me that there is alot to learn with faststone but it is easy to use and makes a real differense to pictures when you take the time to mess around with them and best of all it's FREE to download from C-NET.
When looking at the comments on photos here i see alot of people use "Lightroom" which i will probably get in time. But for now faststone is excellent for me as a newbie to photography so many thanks to you all for pointing me in that direction 
and also for explaining what RAW is ? i now have my camera set on RAW all the time so i can change things if need be.
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