Pete-30D wrote in post #2011237
Welcome to POTN!
It really depends on what you want to do with the image after you've finished your workflow. In most cases, you'll just need to save as a jpg file. If you save with maximum quality, the file size will naturally shrink, but you won't lose any visual quality.
However, if you're doing a fair bit of Photoshop work using layers etc, then saving as PSD (Photoshop format) will be by far the best option as it will retain all your layers and bit-depth (RAW is 16-bit, jpg is 8-bit) and give you exactly what was in the RAW file.
Most people take a backup of their RAW file anyway.
I take backups of the RAW's, and big edit projects I leave as psd's.
I'll give you an example of the situation where I'm unsure of the file type.
This morning I removed an unwanted Item (someone's hand) from the corner of a picture. I wanted to leave the original RAW untouched but save the edited version (which had no layers etc because I managed to use the clone tool to remove the hand). I would like to save the edited version in a format which will allow future editing and printing as if it was a fresh RAW file, is psd looking favourite?
On the jpeg subject, I saved a RAW as a jpeg the other week, but noticed some loss in the colour. Would saving the jpeg at a higher setting prevent this?
