Change images NONDESTRUCTIVELY

A RAW file is an incomplete photograph. You cannot display such an image file or even print from it without some sort of processing. You can always display a JPEG image in all sorts of programs on your computer, plus you can take a JPEG file straight from the camera and have a print made. That is an advantage of JPEG files. However, RAW files include a great deal of tonal and color information that you can use while processing such files in Camera Raw, Photoshop Elements' RAW software.

A RAW file must be interpreted by software for it to become a photograph. No changes are ever made to the original RAW file. All adjustments are instructions that the computer uses to interpret and process the RAW file. This is called nondestructive processing because no pixels from the original file are ever changed. This can be very freeing to you as a photographer because it means you can try almost anything and never damage the original file.