Honestly, I didn’t understand RAW when I purchased my first DSLR. It boggled my brain why I’d want files that take up so much space on my memory cards. Sadly, I took some of my favorite photos that first year with my new DSLR, all in JPG. I know you can’t hear me sobbing, but I am.
This is another subject that deserves its own post, but here’s the short version.
Surprisingly, your camera adds edits to JPG image files. This is why JPGs look sharper, and brighter than RAW files. It also discards a lot of the captured data to compress the image. This is great for immediate sharing, but not for quality.
RAW files are unprocessed and uncompressed, this means you get all the
data your expensive camera captures. RAW is a lossless format, so you also don’t loose any of that precious data when you are editing. Though RAW files are bigger, and need editing before sharing, it is worth it if you want high quality images where you control the final edited result.