So with all of these limitations, why would you ever want to shoot RAW? The answers are control and quality. RAW formats give you the ability to develop the picture the way YOU want to, and allow you to get the most quality out of your photos.

Taking control
A RAW conversion program will allow you to convert or "develop" your photos. There are many programs to do this, ranging from freebies that come with your camera manufacturer to high-end programs costing hundreds of dollars. Which program you use is up to you, and most of the time it just comes down to which workflow and feature set you like best. More on that later.

Once you've decided on a converter, it's time to open your photo. Off the bat, you may notice that the picture doesn't look as vibrant or color accurate as you are used to from the corresponding JPEGs. Remember, the photo hasn't been processed yet; you still have some work to do.

To start, you probably want to adjust the exposure. Most converters and RAW files allow you to over or under-expose your data up to two stops. An example is shown in Figure B.

FIGURE B

Before and after exposure compensation. Click picture for a larger image.

This is a huge strength for RAW. If you underexposed a photo, you can bump up the exposure slider to improve details that may have been lost in the shadows. Likewise, you can dial back the exposure if you over-exposed a scene. RAW allows you much more leeway in this regard. It's much easier to fix a bad exposure in RAW than it is in JPEG.

Once you've gotten the exposure correct, you can set the white balance. A RAW converter will allow you to choose preset color temperatures (Sunlight, Shade, Flash etc.) or you can generally click a white or gray point in the scene to set the white balance that way. Setting the correct white balance sets the correct color baseline for the scene. If the auto white balance on your camera got it wrong, or if you forgot to change the white balance manually, no problem. It's a one-click fix.

So now you have a decently exposed, fairly color-accurate photo. Depending on the RAW converter, you now have a myriad of additional options: Saturation, Hue, Brightness, Sharpness, Curves, Levels, Brightness, Contrast, rotating, cropping, and more. It sounds like a lot of stuff you can do in Photoshop right? Well you're correct, but when you edit a JPEG in Photoshop it changes the data in the photo, and every time you save the file you lose more and more information. By doing a lot of these things in RAW, you are ensuring the best quality for the initially developed photo.

This doesn't mean you can't do additional work in Photoshop once you've developed the file, quite the contrary. The RAW conversion process simply allows you to get as close to perfect as you can before the conversion. This means that your job in Photoshop becomes easier and less destructive to the photo.

In fact, to get the absolute best quality out of a RAW photo, you may not want to convert directly to JPEG. You may want to convert to a 16-bit TIFF file. This gives you the most leeway in your Photoshop work. You take the RAW file, make your adjustments, save to 16-bit TIFF and then edit in Photoshop to end up with your final photo.