I have read a number of articles about the advantage of shooting in RAW. Among them is the idea that our current computers and monitors do not display all of the color data captured in a RAW photo and that in the future we will be able to see and process those colors.
Bob Atkins gives this reason in a comment on this article:
You should get significantly better results by color balancing a RAW file than by color balancing a JPEG. The reason is that the RAW file has all of the original color information, while the JPEG file has thrown away some of it.
To take an extreme example. Suppose you shot indoors under tungsten light but you had the camera set to daylight white balance. If you write a JPEG you'll be throwing away a lot of the color information information and you'll end up with a red/yellow looking image. You can't get that lost info back. However in the RAW file, all the color data for all the channels is there and you can recover the image.
To me, it is defenitely worth the effort of post-processing and the expense of extra storage. I am interested in learning more about DNG, which promises to reduce file sizes.
Do people who are “into” photography, or care about this sort of stuff actually argue for JPEG? Kind of hard to believe.
I use jpg myself (and my 7 year old camera doesn’t give me any other option) but it has a high enough resolution for me, and I wouldn’t do any post-processing anyway, other than red-eye removal occasionally.
There are some who are slow to move to RAW due to storage limitations and the work of post-processing, but I think the benefits far outweigh either.
The ability to edit exposure and white balance produces a far higher quality result than you would get from a jpg, which has saved some shots for me entirely.