RAW, JPEG and TIFF
There seems to be a lot of confusion among some new digital camera owners about exactly what the difference is between RAW, JPEG and TIFF files. This article is intended to be a very basic guide to these file types and how they are related in a typical digital camera.
First some basics
The digital sensor in the majority of digital cameras is what is known as a BAYER PATTERN sensor. This relates to the arrangement of red, green and blue sensitive areas. A typical sensor looks like this:
Each pixel in the sensor responds to either red, green or blue light and there are 2 green sensitive pixels for each red and blue pixel.