Full-size crops from JPEG and RAW Panasonic LX2 image files. The RAW conversions were done with Adobe Lightroom Beta 4.0. The right image hasn't been adjusted in any way. The center RAW image has a white balance adjustment and some noise reduction and smoothing, all done using the Lightroom tools. Note the haloing and harsh edges from in-camera sharpening on the JPEG image. The JPEG also has much more saturated reds and yellows compared to the RAW files. Whether or not you like the in-camera JPEG processing, RAW offers the photographer the opportunity to make their own decisions about the quality of the final image. I think my conversion finds a nice balance between noise reduction and retaining detail without become too harsh.