Understanding Digital Camera File Formats
Popular Photography have published a handy, easy-to-understand overview to the different file formats that digital cameras use.
“When an image is captured by your camera’s digital sensor, a series of settings are applied as alterations to the original raw data. In many high-end cameras, this raw data can be retrieved “un-touched” as a RAW file, but most digital cameras save your photos as JPEGs. In addition to “alterations” for sharpness, white-balance, and the rest (which are either selected by the camera’s default settings or set by you), the choice of file format that the image is saved in can have a profound affect on overall quality. Get it wrong, and there’s little that can be done even in Photoshop.”