Photo editing

I do this often also. Card space is cheap these days and I find this the fastest way to skim through and identify the files I like. I then import the RAW equivalent into Lightroom and go from there. If I am ever to be taking an extreme amount of photos, or if I would not have access to a computer to clear the files for days etc, then I'd switch to RAW only.

The main point really is that RAW files contain more info in the shadows and highlight areas. You have more information to play with if you are making adjustments in these regions. If your final image is to have deliberately over exposed areas for artistic effect etc then you won't necessarily gain a practically significant benefit from using RAW files for example.

Depending on your software, working with RAW files can be easy or require quite a few additional steps. I personally do everything in Lightroom and jump to external software only for HDR or compositing/layering manipulation work. Lightroom loads a RAW file just like any other type of image file, so there's literally no extra work involved in using a RAW file in that software. I only mention this as often the concept of working with RAW files can be quite daunting initially, but the choice of software can really influence how involved the whole process needs to be.

With FASTSTONE [and shooting RAW only] you can skim just as fast/easily. Deleting the fails as you go.

richandfleur wrote "The main point really is that RAW files contain more info in the shadows and highlight areas. You have more information to play with if you are making adjustments in these regions."

This was the case with this image of a gate at Greys Court, shot in the shadows. The words on the top bar were not easily read in the jpeg but adjusting shadows and highlights in Adobe RAW of PSE11 enabled me to clarify them




The effect on the image The little swordsman was even more dramatic

Peter

Thanks for all the feed back everyone.
Regards Ian

Took this recently. Same deal, required a fair bit of shadow recovery:




Here for a better copy...

Both good examples Richard and Peter! I wouldn't limit the RAW advantage though to only shadow and highlight recovery ..... For me it's mainly about the extra fine control over brightness gradations and more subtle colour tones. You can see the difference with a levels adjustment ... A RAW will allow more pulling around before you get the jagged data showing on the histogram graph. A jpeg will produce this (indicating missing blocks of tonal data) very quickly.

There will be more leeway and a smoother transition over a single colour channel range when adjusting saturation or vibrance also, allowing more subtle and control and greater choice over exact colour intensities, with a RAW image.