I took a series of shots of the Golden temple in Kyoto without realising that I had left the camera on manual exposure after using my flash. By the time I found out what I had done I could not go back and reshoot.
They were horribly overexposed but they were in raw.
The ability I had to recover something like a decent image would have been impossible from a compressed jpeg file. The data available from the raw file saved my hide. The adjusted image was remarkably good for a salvaged photo.
I take everything in raw and do all my work in Adobe Lightroom and CS3 if needed. (Aperture is a good alternative on the Mac platform).
The capability of either program on your computer has a lot more potential than the computer in the camera.
Raw is essentially the equivalent of an original negative that you can develop as many times as you like.
Rivets:
I have the Photoshop Elements 2.0 that came with the camera, and will be interested to see just what I can produce.
I seriously doubt that Elements 2 will do much with raw files from a recent camera.
Raw files are generally specific to the camera manufacturer and Elements 2 is Stone Age in the scheme of things and will likely not recognise any recent raw file.
If you want to have a look at processing raw, download the 30 day trial of Elements and experiment with raw using that.
Raw is mostly proprietary from camera manufacturers which is why they provide their own software to process their raw files.
Adobe's Elements will process most manufacturers raw files but if your camera is recent then you will need a recent version of their program.
Have a look at their 30 day trials, or even better look for tutorials on their software first and go through those before starting the clock going on the trial period.