G Brown Loc: Sunny Bognor Regis West Sussex UK

Raw is a proprietary translation of your camera settings. Each camera manufacturer has their own. So by setting the pre-sets in-camera will/could save some fiddling later.
Oddly each Raw software programme reads it differently. It may be slight but it is different. In Theory your camera software programme should read their own Raw files as they intended.
You cannot print Raw it has to be 'saved as' a printable format..Jpg is one of many. Depending on what you want to get out of your photograph it may be of interest to research options.
Post processing allows an individual to alter a image as they like rather than as the panel of experts dictated. To argue that it always makes it better is subjective.
Plus if you send out for your printing you have an additional potential for changes being made.

Lots of choices? Well yes...You will need to design a workload that reflects what you need in order to get the results that you want. Some stay with shooting Jpeg, some shoot in manual and fiddle with settings shot by shot to achieve a better jpeg to reduce PP. Some shoot Raw and spend hours in PP. Most I would think do a little of everything, once they have discovered a method that suits them.
The only short cut to this is to use the services of an image developer. Let them sort out what and how much to use. There are several apparently. It is what the ultra expensive photographers do!

Have fun playing

jnick1947

It's simple! If you have ever done film: the RAW image is the digital "negative" (what the camera deposits on the film). If you take the negative down to CVS and get "prints" made, that's your JPEG. The color temperature is whatever the light source happened to be and can not be changed. Shadows, and highlights are whatever the computerized processor decides to put on the print. Whatever color temp was present in the lighting is baked into the print (or JPEG) and the detail in the highlights and shadows is gone because the process took a "snapshot" of the negative (or RAW file) and threw away a lot of information. Think of an MP3 applied to music, which typically throws away 95% of the information and if you re-record the MP3 a couple of times it turns into garbage.
Every time one processes a JPEG one must save an "original" to save the unprocessed information. RAW files are never changed in processing - just like negatives are not changed when printed. An associated register holds the changes that were made during processing. I would advise starting out with the Nikon program, View NX 2 (or the similar Canon program), as they come with the camera and it is simple to go through large numbers of files and see which are "keepers." It works with simple sliders and one can experiment changing things to see what the various effects do in real time. Again, think of printing film: one can vary the amount of light in the highlights and shadows to bring out much otherwise hidden detail and adjust the overall light level of the print to some degree if one keeps the negative, rather than throwing it away and keeping the CVS print. The downside is file size: if one uses say 12 bit "lossless" compression, a 12 MP camera (Nikon D700) will have a typical 20MB file size after processing. The larger pixel count cameras - such as the 36 MP D800 - end up with 60 MB files and the processing time seems to take about a minute (this on a quad core desk top computer). If you plan to do RAW processing, you would want to go into your camera "menu" and choose "Neutral" Nikons) and set everything (including sharpening) to "0." Sharpening is always done last in your processing.

jnick1947

Hi again,
I just noticed something strange in the last post before mine to the effect that "one cannot print RAW, but must make some other kind of file such as JPEG." I use Capture NX2 and View NX2 with the RAW files from my 3 Nikons and simply hit the print button, set up the particulars on my Epson R1900 and off it goes. If I magnify a RAW file in either of these Nikon programs a couple of steps up, they first produce JPEGs and send them to the monitor. These - and the RAW files that I convert to JPEGs to send out on the web - are degraded into little cubes (or pixels) which destroy detail and one can see these cubes on the monitor as one steps up the magnification. One can see these pixels even in the highest quality 3 to 4 MB JPEG conversions when these files are magnified on the monitor. However, with RAW files once one gets to a magnification of 1 or 1.5 the Nikon programs then generate an image that now only has "grain" to it, similar to film and no "pixels" are visible. This is what the printer puts on the paper when it prints a RAW file. Obviously, the Epson would not know what to do with a Nikon NEF or any other cameras' RAW format, so any of these photo programs must send some universal type file to the printer program.
Seems as though it would more likely be a TIFF file or something like it.

anotherview Loc: California

Your camera may shoot in the RAW-JPEG mode, allowing capture of both file formats. You can work on JPEG files until such time you become ready for Adobe Camera Raw.

Note that ACR can also process photographs in the JPEG file format. I have gotten good results with JPEG files processed in ACR when the JPEG file had a size of several megabytes.

SharpShooter Loc: NorCal

Yes, off it goes, and surely as a JPEG. I'm sure the NX2 already knows if it's going to a printer, it makes the conversion for you. You would have to be using one of the proprietary printers like Canon that within the system can print from the Raws(or a converted tiff of some kind), but that's because it's going from Canon software to Canon software and only the bigger Canon roll feed commercial printers can do that, not the small consumer printers. ;-)
SS

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

TILT! It's quite amazing the fantasies that people come up with when they don't understand how technology or the world actually works.

If you don't understand reality then try to map reality to your own world view. Good plan!

Didn't work too well for the Bundys. Nor has it done in many other situations historically regardless of political affiliations.

It's a bit like cyclists in San Francisco. They can ignore most traffic laws with seeming impunity, but the laws of physics? Not so much! Many end up dead or injured. A thud and a squish. Not really a good exit from life.

jaddottart Loc: Florida

HI Linc.
I read recently that when you shoot Jpeg,you are telling the camera to enhance your picture.the camera's today can do that quite well.when you shoot Raw you are telling the camera you will take care of the picture and create what You saw,not what the camera wants......It is simplified,but,easy to understand.Ofcource it is a given that Raw gives You way more info.Hope that helps......J.

GENorkus Loc: Washington Twp, Michigan

To answer the title... pretty good! LoL