Photoshop/Indesign CS6: The RAW

In this post I intend to introduce the skinny on RAW, particularly..
1) what a RAW format is
2) advantages of using RAW
3) disadvantages of using RAW

RAW?
A RAW file format is an unrendered format that has not been modified or compressed. You can think of them as the higher quality brother of JPEG or TIFF. Sometimes referred to as a 'digital negative', due to its likeness in negatives with film photography because it holds all the information of the original photo and you can create many different copies (or versions) for it.

BENEFITS

 1) Quality!- Due to the lack of modification or compression RAW file formats are the highest quality choice. No lossless compression means no compression artifacts. This also means higher bit depth, dynamic range and exposure compensation.

2) RAW format is nondestructive- that is only the metadata that controls the rendering is changed. Just like using a film negative this digital negative will hold all the information so that you can create as many versions as you like!

DRAWBACKS

The drawback of using a RAW format is primarily the size of the file (since they are typically 2-3 times larger then the JPEG version) and that RAW files are not universally standardized. This standardization issue isn't so much of a contemporary concern but a future concern, as hardware and software rapidly changes photographers worry not all computers will be able to access the RAW format. You may have seen DNG file types before, it stands for Digital Negative Group and was an attempt made by Adobe to address this concern by trying to create a 'universal RAW format'.