You've heard it before: Whenever possible, always create RAW files rather than JPEGs. The reason given is that camera RAWs give you much more data to work with, which in turn means that you can do a lot more in the digital darkroom. The same is true if you look back at film photography. One of the reasons that JPEGs and digital images were so exciting to the first digital photographers is that you can do so much more with a JPEG than with film.

To put it all into perspective, I'll show you some of the limits that early film photographers have to work with. You'll also see how RAW files represent a leap in technology at least as great as the leap from film to digital.