When I switched to the RAW, .CR2 file type, I had to import them into Photoshop using a plugin by Canon, which came on a disk with the camera. I'm guessing .NEF is Nikon's equivalent, so you might find a similar solution there.

Only problem is I don't have photoshop... Trying to download GIMP to see how well I can work that. =P

Eep... sorry, I should have sat down and gotten your software working. It's all my fault!

It's fine. I found a codec that allows me to work with them so far... we'll see if I can find a way to post them to .jpg so I can get them seen on FA! =3

So... remind me again exactly why RAW image data is better then JPG again? =P

It's able to store values FAR outside the 0-255 range in R, G, and B of JPEG. Think more in the range of -1024 through 2048 or so, roughly, compared to the values it ends up normalizing into the JPEG. So you can play with the exposure and color balance quite heavily; it supports a higher dynamic range with better quantization than JPEG by an order of magnitude basically.

Also most camera sensors are a mosaic like this:

[color=red]████[/color]
█[color=blue]███[/color]
[color=red]████[/color]
█[color=blue]███[/color]

So instead of storing the 'blurred back together' single panels of R, G, and B, it stores the raw mosaic in that case as well for handling scaling better.

As for software, I STILL managed to forget to link to this, it's probably the best tool out there for every platform under the sun:

RAW Therapee

Yay, I broke FA's parser! No big surprise there... >_>

/me chuckles, and fluffs up a vixen didn';t know foxxy like pictures.

IrfanView can handle just about every image media type in existence. If you want an effective viewer I suggest this one =3

Also, RAW data images contain no compression and minimal data handling from the camera. Its basically a digital negative and has benefits for high quality production. For general users like you and I who are taking photos to share with friends therea isnt any real reason to use it. If you wanted to take a sunrise picture of yourself in your suit sitting on a beach for use in a frame or artistic situation than using a RAW format is would render better quality. But if your just going to change a RAW data file into a compressed jpg to share on the web than the benefit is moot.

Luff ^_^

Actually most RAWs do compression now on newer cameras, they just use lossless compression like a PNG instead of lossy JPEG. And for Mosaic cameras that means they're working in a lower resolution than the resulting JPEG so it ends up almost cancelling out the size disadvantage then. :)

And I'd disagree on being useless for hobbyist level folks: It lets you "just shoot" and deal with many adjustments after the fact at your leisure, instead of caring as much about getting all the settings right (sunlight/indoor lighting/fluorescent lighting) so for convention photographs that aren't entirely indoors it can make things easier to get good quality photos out of it.

KEEPING the RAWs once you've made the set of JPEGs you want to show off and keep? That's something useless to most hobbyists, but working from them removes the time constraints while shooting of adjusting the camera all the time. =^.^=

I suppose thats a matter of preference. When I was at blizcon taking pictures to share with friends I didnt really care about quality pre or post. As long as whatever it was I was taking a picture of came out understandable than the +/-10% quality difference in taking RAW vs JPG pictures didnt matter.

And I only say 10% because thats the maximum amount of effort I'd put into any single RAW image in a reel XP
If you enjoy spiffying up pictures and making them as good as they can get than on or off the camera you're probably above a 'hobbyist' level photographer =D

Nah, hobbyist is where I consider someone willing to put any amount of 'tinkering' work into something. That's what a hobbyist is, a modern-day niche tinkerer to me. :)

If you're truly of a 'point and shoot' stance, that's back at amateur/tourist photography, and then yeah, RAW is pointless and even most modern top-end cell-phones can take excellent photography at this point for that use case. =^.^=

Your terminology may differ, that's just my breakpoint.

*waggwag* This is a neat little program I use - http://rawtherapee.com/