blackest Loc: Ireland

True but it gives the impression that raw is for photographers who can't use their camera's... maybe it is a good reason to start, but hopefully not why people continue :)

boberic Loc: Quiet Corner, Connecticut. Ex long Islander

Just a thought. You don't have to decide which is best. If you shoot RAW you can you can convert a copy to JPEG if you want. But if you shoot JPEG you can't convert a copy to RAW

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

This is true, but you get additional changes over which you have no control.
--Bob

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

That's a bit of a stretch. I did not come away with the impression that, "that raw is for photographers who can't use their camera's... (sic)"

The Photo Gallery is full of images of scenes with a narrow dynamic range (DR) where neither form capture is challenged - in other words, where there is no highlight or shadow detail lost that needs to be recovered by developing from raw.

The photographer just needs to know the difference between a scene with a wide DR and one whose DR is narrow.

With a wide DR scene and JPEG you have to decide which to sacrifice - highlight or shadow detail or tonality. Shooting raw gives you only about one extra stop at either end of the range before you have to consider HDR.

The greatest fallacy of using ETTR is that the corresponding JPEG will always look overexposed. That is simply not true.

ETTR should only mean exposing so that the highlights are not blown. Sometimes the corresponding JPEG will look light (when the DR is narrow and you probably did not need ETTR in the first place) and sometimes it will look dark (when the DR is so great that blowing the highlights is a possibility).

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

But if your JPEG does not show evidence of blown highlights or lost shadow detail, you can always convert it to 16-bit TIFF before you start to edit it. That way you will avoid banding and prevent any loss of tonality while you edit the image. Wait until you are done to save the final result as JPEG.

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

There's no need to do that....

Install the $10 FastPictureViewer codec in any Windows computer and you'll be able to view virtually any RAW format, as well as other types of image files that are normally "unviewable" in Windows (such as TIFFs). You can see thumbnails or enlarged views of virtually any image format directly in Explorer (thumbnails) or Windows Picture Viewer, etc. (Note: unprocessed RAW images are a little low contrast and may not show true colors... reds and oranges in particular may be "clipped"... but Windows Explorer and Picture Viewer, etc., aren't color calibrated, anyway.)

I've been using the FastPictureViewer codec for years, it works well and is a real time saver. No need to record and save RAW + JPEG in-camera and waste memory card and hard drive space storing all the duplicated JPEGs (Note: I do keep "finished" JPEGs.... saved after post-processing via Lightroom, Photoshop, etc.)

https://www.fastpictureviewer.com/codecs/

The simplest answer to the original question is that RAW files are "lossless" and contain much more data and that allows latitude for a lot more adjustment in post-processing. All digital cameras initially record a RAW file... but when you set the camera to JPEG, the image is being converted "in-camera" to the smaller format and a lot of data is thrown away. So your "in-camera" settings that effect the JPEG conversion had better be relatively close to what you want, because there are limits to how much can be done to fine-tune JPEGs later on in your computer. With RAW that contain all the originally captured data, nothing is thrown away and it's much more possible to change white balance, change exposure, and more. RAW files can be "worked" in 16-bit mode too... which gives better results than 8-bit JPEGs. When you are working on an image in 8-bit mode you have a "palette" or roughly 17 million unique colors... Sounds like a lot, until you compare with 16-bit which has a palette of 23 BILLION colors... over 1300X more unique colors!

avman Loc: Normal IL

True.....however many would attempt to over process a JPEG image.....

and for the non-photographically oriented or knowledgeable (many of the world's population) this is a simplified way for them to them understand a basic difference between RAW and JPEG

Ferris Loc: South Carolina

Linda from Maine is the best response you will get. Totally agree.