Why is RAW so great?

[paigegreen916]

If you can't upload anything but JPEG for printing, and you have to change the format to alter in Photoshop, whats the point of shooting in RAW? even if the quality is good in the camera, you're going to have to change the format anyway. i guess i'd just like to understand why its better.

 

[NateWagner]

well, the main advantage as I see it is that if you screw up the exposure, or the white balance when you take the photo you can modify that and fix it without losing much if any detail to your photo in post.

If you were to change that information on the jpg version it would cost much more in quality. Also, as I understand it, every time you save a file in jpg you will lose information, thus if you open a jpeg, and then edit it and save it again you're compressing it yet again. With the raw file you can continually save it as a raw/tiff until you are completely done with it, and ready to go.

those are the primary reasons to me... though I'm sure there are others.

 

[Big Mike]

Article... WHY RAW?