Hi folks,

I was playing around earlier in my garden, just taking a few pictures with the RAW+JPG setting of my 40D...just to see if I could do something in RAW to make then look better than the out-of-camera jpeg.

Now, forgive me if I am being dumb, but the software provided by Canon looks crap in comparison to using Elemnts 6 Camera RAW 4.2.... am I missing something? The Canon software seems to have almost no tools to do anything with the shots!?

Ignoring that for a second, I decided to have a go in Camera RAW:

1) I found the adjustments possible there very worthwhile...especially the slight adjustments to white balance, exposure, contrast etc - There appears to be no "curves" setting...am I correct and will this limit the positive effect I can get from using RAW?

2) Should I be using the in-built sharpening of this tool, or is a better tactic to reduce the sharpening to 0 and then to all my sharpening later after I have finished messing about with it in Elements?

3) Noise-reduction... any good? What do the two settings "mean"...Luminance and Color. Is there a better method of noise-reduction? (not that noise is a problem with the 40D though!)

4) Once I have finished messing with it, how do I then move into Element to do my final editing and sharpening and saving to jpeg etc without altering the original RAW file? Seems to me that it would be best to leave the original RAW file as shot just in case I want to go back to the beginning and try again? There are "Save Image", "Done" and "Open Image". If I "open image", do all the necessary editing then save to jpeg, will that both a) provide the best quality method of working and b) preserve the original RAW file as shot?

Incidentally, I could definitely notice a benefit in picking out highlight detail with one of my shots! Not sure how it managed to do this with the limited controls though...

Steve