What is Camera RAW?

Camera RAW is a file format that contains minimally processed data from the image sensor of a digital camera or image scanner. RAW files are named so because they have not yet been processed and are therefore not ready to be printed or edited with a bitmap graphics editor. Typically, a RAW image is processed by a RAW converter; broad adjustments such as white balance and demosaicing are applied before conversion to a "positive" format such as JPEG, TIFF, or PNG for storage, printing, or further manipulation. RAW formats offer greater control over image processing and can preserve more of the original scene data compared to processed formats.