I'm using RAW for about 95% of my photos. I'm quite happy with the possibilities you have after shooting. Especially changing white balance and colors is great and can improve photos tremendous.
I'm using Adobe Lightroom and this program rocks (not just for RAW photos, also JPGS). The program is very usable and provides a huge amount of possibilities. You can download a test version from Adobe.

RAW also has a "dark" side. The pictures are extremely big, you need 3x more space. The processing is much slower than JPGs. My Canon 400D can only shoot about 5 RAW shots in a row and storing takes really long on my Ultra II card. For sports I just have to use JPG because of my slow camera and slow compact flash cards (I wont invest more money into equipment).

Using RAW for studio shots and artistic stuff is great and I would never use JPG again. Correcting RAWs is much easier and results in better quality.

That all sounds good to me, but any idea why white balance correction (and other corrections) are better with RAW? For example, what difference would I see if I tried to correct white balance on a jpeg, as opposed to the same image as RAW?

Does anybody notice a difference in noise reduction filters when applied side-by-side to RAW and JPG?

The difference is that RAW is exactly (for the most part) what your camera's sensor sees. If you do any kind of processing or compression, it tends to involve color balancing and other stuff that keeps you from working on the exact raw image you started with.

White balance is a perfect example. If you correct the white balance on a RAW file, you're correcting the exact tones and colors your sensor saw. If you do it to a JPEG, you're working on a somewhat subjective interpretation by the camera of what it saw. HUGE difference.

That being said, often those huge differences are only visible to picky people, so ymmv, but check it out and see for yourself.

Just to continue the thought...

Noise filters are another good example. Some cameras, in JPG mode, do their own noise filtering. Depending on your camera, yours may or may not. What it comes down to with RAW is do you think you can do a better job at processing pictures than your camera.

If you really want to get the most out of your photos, raw is the only way to go.

In general, there is less degradation with successive manipulations of a raw file in photoshop as opposed to a jpeg since jpeg are 8 bit while raw are around 12 bit (fewer available colours increases the risk of posterisation). Additionally when you shoot in jpeg the camera usually applies a tone curve in-camera meaning you lose potential dynamic range.

For a more in-depth analysis, check out the following page:
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/RAW-file-format.htm

If you're really sitting on the fence, you may want to try the raw+jpeg feature on your camera (if it has one). Or alternatively you can just batch process all your raws into jpegs after importing them, and then you always have the raws to go back to if you want to.

I started shooting RAW a couple of months ago and find it a much better format. I noticed increased sharpness and much wider range of control over colors and contrast. The files are much larger, but with storage being cheap and compact flash prices reasonable, I don't mind.
Here's a good, short article that explains the capture process: http://www.adobe.com/digitalimag/pdfs/understanding_digitalrawcapture.pdf
I still shoot JPG sometimes, but not much.

Other benefits of RAW files:
1) You are working with 12 to 14 bits of data in a 16 bit space vs .jpg which is 8 bits and then compressed. More bits of date allows for significantly more latitude for adjustment of exposure, tone, and color balance as mentioned above.

2) RAW files are generally not compressed or if they are, it is done losslessly so you do not loose any of the original data captured by the camera. There is always some lossy compression applied in camera to .jpg files, in essence some of the data you captured is thrown away in the name of making a smaller file. Every time you edit and re-save a .jpg file it is re-compressed and some data is lost.

3) RAW files are not generally processed or sharpened in the camera. .jpg files are processed for exposure, contrast, saturation, color balance, have a tone curve applied, are sharpened by the camera. All these settings are 'baked' into the .jpg file and can not be un-done in any editing software. Sharpening in particular is an issue as some point and shoot camera over sharpen images leaving halos.

4) With camera created .jpg files you must accept the de-mosaicing algorithm built into the camera. I f shot as RAW and then converted to .jpg in a PC/Mac based RAW converter, in many cases you can create a much better .jpg file, often with much lower chroma noise among other things.

Very interesting topic.
I own a d40X, and I never shoot in RAW because I find them hard to manipulate.
What are the best software to read RAW files?
Do you save your RAW files or convert them later to JPG?
Can anyone explain the basic steps to having a final picture (to the point where I would upload it to zooomr) taken in RAW.
From Camera d40X to MAC to Zooomr (Software recommended and much more)
Thank you

reveiled, See my post here. http://www.zooomr.com/groups/epicenter/discuss/370/#post2296
I think it addresses most of your questions.

reveiled, See my post here. http://www.zooomr.com/groups/epicenter/discuss/370/#post2296
I think it addresses most of your questions.

Thanks Jeff. I will definitely try it out.
The only thing is I dont use a date based file structure. I use a category based i'd say
Folder structure:
Pictures => Events => Celebrations => July 4th => 2007 => July4th (27) flag boat.jpg
Pictures => Birthday => Jeff Birthday => 2006 => Jeff birthday (13) kris, thomas, marvin, cake, baloon.jpg
See Screenshot


I hope you understand the concept ( and I already have 15,884 Pictures categorized like that on my file server)

reveiled, Your method sounds like it works well also. Man, you shoot a lot of photos! That's great because you end up with lots of keepers the more you shoot. What photo editing software do you use?

I easily shoot about 50 pictures a day since I switch from my H1 to the d40X and around a 500 to 1000 if there is a special event.
I use Photoshop CS2.
Not a pro at it however I try to duplicate many tutorials I find around to end up with results like.

following this tutorial http://www.tutorialdash.com/tutorial/adobe-photoshop/photo-editing/view/Airbrush-A-Person
I recently downloaded lightroom trial, but I really dont feel it. It is slow.
well maybe not as slow as CS2 running on my Intel Mac but its annoying.
Maybe it is because all my pictures are remotely stored?
Any word of advice?

reveiled, Unfortunately I don't have time to shoot photos every day, although I'd like to be able to. (Have to work, and take care of the kids, etc.)

Lightroom is a little slow, but I've been using it for over a year, since it was beta, and the latest version is a bit faster than previous versions. If you haven't tried v1.1 yet, it might be worth a try, I believe it is a bit faster than v1.0 I'm running it under Windows XP on a PC. If you are working on files remotely, such as on an external HD via USB or Firewire, that might make LR run a little slower than if your photos are on your local HD.

It takes a little bit of mind shift to get used to the Lightroom work flow compared to what you are used to. But the ability to edit multiple files at the same time, without having to open each one like you do in CS2 can speed up editing greatly. I never used key words before using Lightroom, but now I keyword every photo with location, event & people tags. Lightroom has some very powerful database capability that can allow you to filter and sort your photos by not only key words, but any other meta data associated with the photo file. You can create 'collections' or groups of photos and save them.

All editing you do in Lightroom is saved as meta data which defines what the edited photo looks like based on the original RAW or .jpg file, so you are not modifying the original file, and you are not re-saving the original file with edits, just the very small bit of data that describes the edits. You can also create multiple 'virtual copies' of a photo, each with different adjustments and crops etc. These virtual copies are also saved as meta data. This saves a significant amount of disk space. You can export any of the edited versions of a file to a .jpg file at any time if you for instance want to upload it to Zooomr.

My experience with RAW files.
Today I went out and shot a classic car show at the local Denny's all in RAW.
I get home, Open up lightroom 1.0, Run the update to 1.1 and start importing the show pictures from my memory card.
I edit some of them (pain, I really still dont understand the lightroom workflow & interface)
I then right click on 6 of them to export to JPEG
Done!
Upload to Zooomr.
Honestly I still dont grasp the concept.
What really would I be able to do with this picture

available in RAW here http://reveiled.net/files/raw/classic.nef
I've read the benefits of RAW files, but I am really new at this RAW shooting, If anyone would like to manipulate this RAW file to give me an example, please go ahead.
Jeff as far as Lightroom, I see it hard to adapt, specially due to my file structure and my files based on a remote server (via network)
How would lightroom help?
Just today I pulled out picture I took back in 1999 by using keywords with picasa and I could do the same with my mac using iphoto
Still I prefer editing with Photoshop, But I'd really appreciate seeign what RAW files give out?
Before and After?
Then with lightroom all that meta data, is it search able by other software or my finder or windows explorer.

Reveiled, Sounds like you have an understanding of Lightroom's basic work flow as you outlined it in your first couple of sentences. As far as RAW file processing, all of the adjustments in Lightroom v1.1 are identical to those in Camera RAW 4.1 which is part of Photoshop CS3. So how you process RAW files in Lightroom is identical to how you would do it in Photoshop.

The power of Lightroom is that once you import your photos, you can do much more than just simple edits and exporting. You can assign keywords to each photos or to all of the photos in your shoot, you can create groups of photos within Lightroom based on keywords or any number of other metadata keys. There are a couple of other 'modules' in Lightroom. With the 'Web' module, you can create web pages of your photos using the included templates or third party templates and even upload the web pages directly to a server. In the 'slideshow' module, you can create slides shows of your photos and even export them as acrobat files. The print module is one of the nicest interfaces I've seen as you get an accurate wysiwyg interface showing what your print will look like.

As far as your file structure, you should be able to import your photos into Lightroom with the same structure that you have on your hard drive. Having the files remote should not pose a significant problem. The only issue you might have is a little slowness when editing, depending on how fast the data link is between your computer and the HD.

If you assign keywords or edit any of the IPTC or EXIF data for a photo, be it RAW or jpg and then export it from Lightroom, all of the meta data edits you made will be in the exported file and will be available to other programs. If you edit meta data in jpg files in Lightroom and allow it to update meta data in the original file, it will be available in the original file even without exporting it. Meta data for RAW files can be written to .xmp side car files, just as Photoshop does and will be available to any application that can read both RAW files and the Photshop xmp file format.

Not everyone likes Lightroom. If you are happy with your Photoshop work flow, then by all means, stick with it. As far as RAW file processing, you should get identical results using Camera RAW in Photoshop or Lighroom. In many cases when you use Lightroom, you will still need to go to Photoshop to do certain edits such as applying masks, making composites or panoramas with multiple files etc., that can not be done in Lightoom.