First and foremost, you have to expose the image properly. if the image is overexposed. you pic has had it. blown highlights cannot be recovered. there is a little more leeway in raw but it is not THAT much. simply make it a habit to expose properly and jpeg or raw you will be fine.

You are by far better off giving your pc the very best image you can to work with; it makes the starting point a much better situation..

With that said, on to histograms..

A histogram is a 3 sided box with no top. it will be filled with a line that mostly will have a central bulge and a left and right sloping falling line towards the bottom line. the single important item is not to let the RIGHT side line hit the vertical wall before it hits the bottom. if it does then you have blown highlights. conversely, if the left line hits the left wall before it hits the bottom you have overdone blacks.. the ideal situation is to allow neither the left or right lines to hit the walls before they hit the bottom.

Because that means blown highlights, which cannot be recovered in raw conversion or pp. you can, if you wish get some or all of the right side back useing pp, maybe...

I wrote the following some months ago. I am not pushing a point of view it depends on you. you might find the last entry interesting. study the 2 pics and see the differences, and decide for yourself if raw is worth what some people say it is..

I wrote the following posts some time ago, they may be of interest..

No matter which dslr you buy..

Heavily consider the following. there are NEW DSLR owners' writing in all over these forums on this subject..

When changeing from a p&s to a dslr, there is a huge difference..

When you take p&s out of the box add a memory card and a fully charged battery you can now shoot and take very good pics..

BUT, you cannot do this with dslr. the camera HAS TO BE SETUP first. you have to adjust the contrast/saturation/sharpness/shooting modes(color style or whatever it is called) to your likes. if you don't it is quite likely you will disappointed with results. your p&s will likely outshoot the dslr..

To setup-you have shoot a test shot make ONE adjustment reshoot check pc screen readjust, until you are satisfied. and you do this with each of the adjustment types. then you have all the custom adjustments in the menu to check and if wanted change..

When done you can put the camera into AUTO or PROGRAM and get reasonably nice shots. I would advise at first staying with jpeg. as you learn about the camera and photography you can then go to the other shooting modes and try RAW if you wish..

Dslrs are made to see the shot through the optical viewfinder not through the lcd. this is true of almost all dslrs including the k10d. there was a thread.

Not to log ago about who would want a dslr with a preview lcd, al,most noone wanted one..

Dslrs and color..

If you mean heavy saturated colors then no dslr is going to do that. they are not made to give strongly saturated colors. they are made to give ACCURATE COLORS. not heavy saturated colors..

This is not the same thing at all. too many people who come from a p&s are very disappointed in th dslr colors, because they are not bright and saturated. this is because they are and have been using a p&s which has been giving them saturated and incorrect clors for so long that they think it is the right look. nothing could be further from the truth. the p&s colors are wrong, wrong. the camera manufactures know that the public buys high megapixel and heavy saturated colors and is what they make and sell to the public..

But the slr/dslr is a whole different world. for the dslr accuracy of the scene in terms of view and color is a religion rpt religion. you want accurate color that is what you are going to get with dslr. but they will not be the bright saturated colors of a p&s. ytou can with adjustments in the menus up the color is dslr, but it will not look the INACCURATE CARTOON COLOR of the p&s..

If you are wishing to buy a dslr for more and brighter color, save you money the p&s is what you want..

Not too long ago a new owner of a dslr was on these forums talking about the poor color of his new dslr. it seems as if he was shooting on an overcast day. many many people replying to him told him that cloudy day shots give the most accurate color, which they do. he couldn't believe and get over that idea. he also owned a p&S previously..

You might be interested in this; which I posted a while back..

Http://forums.dpreview.com/...forums/read.asp?forum=1036&message=23677257..

First I shoot jpeg all the time. I use a pentax *istD dslr. have tried raw and got no improvement in my pics, though before my little jpeg vs raw test I thought that there would be a difference. there wasn't FOR ME. the reason I concluded was that my pics as shot in the field require almost zero processing. the great rpt great rpt great advantage of raw is the amount and type of post processing the picture taker does in the pc.

I am currently pp about 5% of all jpegs I shoot. also, I currently crop in the pc 0% of what I shoot. I do it in the camera, it's called composition..

The two great areas that raw absolutely shine in is when you have no time to properly set up the shot. the other is when the lighting is so odd or undetermined that you have no idea what it is and you have to rely on pp to give you the proper color and white balance adjustments. a possible third necessity for post-processing would be that if the camera or scene has something that you have to correct for on virtually every picture..

In other words, it all depends on the quality of pictures you are delivering to the pc. if you consistedly shoot pics and they are such that the pc is used for sorting storage and printing, like me, then you can go to the convieniece of jpeg..

But, if you find yourself adjusting correcting or fixing the iso, exposure, white balance, color, and cropping THEN you should be using raw. only you know your photographic abilities and what type of pics you are taking. for this reason, the decision to shoot raw or jpegs is yours alone based on your needs..

For me jpegs work, BUT that might not work for others. raw for others could be the way to go..

The ONLY rpt only rpt only time the shot is a jpeg is when it is brought to the computer. it is either discarded or changed(i tend to have small tweaks) on the pc in some way, then it "save as" a tiff. the jpeg is never "save" or "save as" a jpeg ever. the original jpeg is stored in a jpeg folder that is a holdall..

This keeps the as shot quality intact..

With a raw file you have to convert the file to jpeg or tiff to use it for any other purpose. you cannot print a raw file, for example. with jpegs they can be used immediately as soon as they are downloaded into the pc. as far.

As batch processing is concerned, yes it speeds up the raw conversion process, but it eliminates one of the advantages of the raw process. this is the individual care and effort an individual raw pic gets when it is not batch processed. the individual raw file gets the maxium care it needs to give it's best picture. with batch processing this is gone, you are not achieving the max from each shot. and this is the reason you are shooting raw in the first place. to me if you are batch processing, you might as well go with jpeg..

Yes, I have pe3 and cs2 and can use both..

My view. gary..

Check out the learn/glossary section on this site (menu top left). Also, the tutorials athttp://www.luminous-landscape.com. Both have some examples to demonstrate things.Androohttp://Androo.smugmug.com..