raw question

so if RAW is all the data captured by the sensor. Why is it displayed as a color picture when opening it using Capture 1 Pro?

Shoulndt it be black or white or just outlines of an image. Why is it processed?

It's interpreted using the RAW interpreter file for your camera. Then you are able to adjust several settings like exposure and the like.
Truely, it's just a bunch of digital data that's uncompressed like the JPEGs that would come off... with all of those processing settings applied (sharpen/contrast/satu​ration/WB/etc). Basically, you're bypassing that step so you can control it.

B&W? There are R, G, and B sensor layers in the camera... it's capturing all of the colour data so why would you expect it to show in B&W?

Why would you ever want to see the unprocessed RAW data? How would it be useful?

The purpose of RAW conversion software like Capture One is to convert the RAW data to a colour image. You tweak the parameters like white balance, saturation, contrast, sharpness etc. and it converts your image to a colour image. When tweaking the parameters you want to preview how the result is going to be - after all, the result is what counts.

You are right, the RAW data is grey-scale data - a numeric representation of the intensity of the light striking each pixel. There is no picture to be seen, but a graphic representation would be a checkerboard of various shades of grey.

When an application (either a viewer or a converter) displays a RAW it does one of two things: either it actually displays the embedded jpg or it creates a whole new file in your computer's memory. This is called a conversion but that's a misnomer, it is really a new file built according to the data in the RAW plus some very clever guesses regarding the additional data needed to make a color image. Until it is saved by writing it on the hard disc as either a jpg or a tif, it exists in the memory as a sort of bitmap. That initial bitmap might be built in accord with the "as shot" settings or it might be made using other defaults, depending on the application. You then have the opportunity to change it before saving.
Elie

I had a plug in for Photoshop that allowed direct conversion of a Minolta RAW file without interpolation. There is an image, but it's very dark and very green. Not B&W...

Yeah, it's not grey-scale data like tzalman mentioned... it's pure binary data that's captured from the sensors measuring how much light hit the sensors.

In the sensor, there are colour screens covering each of the pixel sensors. This will capture the amount of light by either red/green/blue depending on which one the sensor is capturing.

If you wanted to display the RAW file... you'd probably want a hex editor... which would just show you a bunch of values between 0 and F (hex code).

To get a B&W interpretation of a RAW file, you would still need to interpret it. It does not save the image in grey-scale... but it does save the data for each sensor in a series of number values representing the light strength... but again, this is for 3 different channel types.

Check out the bottom of this page to see what a sensor (CCD/CMOS) actually would look like. This also explains why the green channel usually has less noise and better source data... there's more of them in the grid.
Each sensor in the grid is responsible for capturing a specific colour value.

You're kind of right. All the sensor does is count photons that hit it. There are red, green, and blue filters in front of the sensor sites that only let those colors of light thru, more green than red and blue though, because the eye's more sensitive to green.

Well not black and white, but definitely not in color. As other members said, gray scale. Because, I choose to shoot RAW so I can process the photo as opposed to the built-in computer in the camera that processes the photos. Right? Then how come I see color,saturation,contr​ast etc etc etc ?

So I can process it the way I took it. Why should the camera process it and then allow me to edit it with more information than the casual jpg-processed image. I mean, isnt that why you shoot RAW? So you develop the image you saw.

As Raitch has already said, basically the photsites are counting the number of photons hitting each site. Each of the sites have one single colour filter. The filters are applied to the sites in the following sequence: Red, Green, Blue, Green, Red etc. This is called a Bayer pattern. The purpose of this is to allow the camera to measure the amount of light of each colour striking the sensor in each area. Because each sensor only captures one colour of light, some interpolation needs to occur in order to output three colours per photosite. If this wasn't done a 20D for example would only be a 2.7 mega pixel camera. Different RAW converters use different interpolation methods which is why you get different results from each of them.

The amount of calculations required to interpolate this data into a meaningful image is huge. I don't think that it is realistic to expect that someone could do this manually. The use of a RAW file will still mean that the computer interprets the data for you in order to get the most out of the data so you will not have total control. What RAW does allow for is a greater flexibility with the data from the camera than can be achieved through JPEG for example. This should allow you to get pretty close to producing the image you want.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean....
You want to shoot in RAW so the camera isn't responsible for "interpreting" how you expect the image to turn out.
Think of it this way... in RAW mode, the camera will store all of the data... that's it.

When you shoot in JPEG, the camera stores all of the data (like RAW), but then applies the camera sharpening, contrast, colour, white balance, and all those settings to the image. Then, it applies JPEG compression to the data to produce a JPEG that is widely readable.

When you shoot RAW, you basically take control of all those settings instead of letting the camera do it. Then you can save as JPEG and get the best quality.
If you shoot JPEG, you have to perform some edits on an already compressed and altered file, then turn around and recompress it. You're losing a lot of data that way.

Where do you see "color,saturation,cont​rast etc etc etc?" When you're converting your RAW photo? That's because you're in control of those settings... the camera doesn't apply them for RAW.

In RAW, those settings aren't applied. In the RAW converter, the camera settings are shown by default but are not actually applied to the image.
You adjust the sliders (colour temp, contrast, exposure, brightness, sharpness, etc) in the RAW converter to the settings that you want and apply them once. The RAW converter will then save the converted file to TIFF (uncompressed) or if you're using Photoshop, you can load the image right in as a new document.

With RAW the settings are only applied once... but you have a chance to change them first.

The color, etc. is not in the RAW. It is created by your computer when you click on the RAW file and will exist only in memory until it is saved. Consider it the computer's suggestion for a nice conversion that you can take it or leave it.

But that is exactly what grey-scale is. Shades of grey are the graphic interface for representing light intensity without color information. For instance, the L channel in LAB space. It might be divided into 256 levels (shades of grey) or in the case of RAW 4096 levels, but saying that pixel 273 reported level 2500 does not give us any color information until we also know that pixel 273 sits behind a red filter. Now we can describe what the pixel saw as 2500,0,0. The next step is to estimate better values for the two zeros in order to recreate the original subject color. But all this is done in the converter, and what the RAW brings to the table is only a list of grey L values.
Elie