RAW vs JPEG

[Joezilla]

Ok, as I said in another forum, I am in way over my head with the Rebel XT. I know shooting pictures in RAW is better than Jpeg, but why? What program do you use to edit / modify your RAW pics, and what do you convert them to? The bundled Canon software seems lame to me. Any and all advide is greatly appreciated.

[MarcelSpijker]

I use Capture One for dealing with my RAW files.
But Photoshop CS can also read it. Older Photoshop programs i dont know.

The beauty of RAW is that it has every data stored in itself.
So you can apply sharpening, white balance etc etc yourself when you look at the image on your screen. There is no data loss.

A RAW is just like a normal negative with film (only better :) ).

JPEG has all the sharpening etc etc already done. So if its to sharp or something you have a difficult time getting it to look better.

What i also like with RAW is that you can correct your exposure from -2 to +2 so i dont need to bracket annymore.

[Newby]

Hey Joezilla,

Everything Marcel Said is right on. Adobe isn't going to support RAW for XT until the release of Camera RAW 3.0 (go here to check it out here (http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/cameraraw.html)). I imagine that Canon sent in its bundle the Digital Photo Pro. If not it is pretty easy to use so you can download it, you should be able to here (http://consumer.usa.canon.com/ir/controller?act=DownloadDetailAct&fcategoryid=314&modelid=10464) (click on the Driver's software link go down to applications and choose Digital Photo Pro 1.6.1). If you want to know the ins and outs of it there's a great tutorial here (http://photoworkshop.com/canon/dpp/index.html)

[Newby]

UPDATE

Well Adobe has just released the camera RAW support (http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/cameraraw.html) for the XT, Nikon D2X, Olympus EVOLT E-300, and Olympus C-7070 Wide Zoom. This update also has Adobe's DNG converter built in. For those of you who don't now what the DNG converter is check this out (http://www.adobe.com/products/dng/main.html)