I don’t really understand the question of JPEG or RAW especially with Lightroom giving efficient workflow for any format !
I recommend Chris Orwig training available for Lightroom, BUT I recommend everybody to spend some time defining proper PRESET. I consider PRESET like ACTION for Photoshop, this has to be used to call whatever method you might have to work, a workflow.

For images that I share on the internet, JPG is good enough considering the low resolution that I upload them at but if I am going to print or have a special event, I will use RAW mode.

JPG is more convenient for sure but that is all it is. You’ll never get better image quality from jpg than from RAW.

That being said, its easy to become a snob about these things and there are plenty of scenarios where the convenience of jpg is the way to go. But as someone trying to make money from photography (part time, so I hesitate to call myself a professional) I don’t find my self in those scenarios often.

JPEGS are for snapshots and when space is limited in my opinion.

@Martin – I too use Picasa to organize my photos and if I remember
correctly Picasa do support some RAW formats.

@Paul – I am not condemning RAW, its just that I think it is a bit
troublesome to use at the moment.

@Mike – I would have thought someone in the photo/print industry would
have backed the RAW format for its flexibility, guess not…

@Dave & Bob – Have you thought that if using the defaults is just fine in
Lightroom, putting the same settings into a camera would have given you
the same results without any further PP?

Raw is a good thing. But don’t feel bad when you’re not doing it. You don’t lose soooo much in picture quality (see also Ken Rockwells post) and you gain simplicity and speed. A bad exposure is not really that much better with raw. A good exposure is not really that much better with raw.

Raw is a good thing but at a cost. For me it’s not worth it anymore – but that’s a very personal decision. Plus it might change over time.

For newbies that have never post processed before and would like to dive into Lightroom, I highly recommend The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book for Digital Photographers book by Scott Kelby.

I work in the photo / print industry, I can tell you first hand that RAW has let people become sloppy photographers. The attitude of, “I’ll fix it later in Photoshop” is a horrible one to adopt. Learn your craft. Moreover, if you are doing this as a profession and / or looking to do it as a profession, you will kill yourself in an all RAW workflow, no matter how stream-lined you make it. Take an average wedding photographer, they may shoot 600-2000 photos per wedding and spend as much time post-processing RAW files as they did actually shooting the wedding. That cuts profits in HALF, yo uare paid for your time. The time spent post processing job 1 could have been used to do consults for potential job 2, 3 and 4, thus getting you deposits and making more money.

Know what your output is going to be. If you are shooting your sisters baby’s first birthday, chances are you will never make a print bigger then 8×10 or 8×12 – is RAW really needed? Especially if you are in someones home and using a flash w/ a diffuser (like omni-bounce)?

Take the 2 minutes to do a custom white balance wherever you can, learn to actually shoot and hit a proper exposure and be a photographer, not a photo-retoucher.

Whilst you are able to adjust jpegs I would rather retain as much pixel information as possible throughout my workflow. Yes, my flow may be slower than a jpeg shooter but I know and am comfortable with that.

In the end it distills to this – do what you want to do. If you are happy with the printed results from jpegs or raw files then great that’s what works for you. IF your clients are happy and you feel your images can’t be improved then it matters not whether the file was jpeg or raw.

Personal choice – if it ain’t broke etc. but at least try the other file format before condemning those that chose the opposite format to you choice.

My 2 penneth.

RAW is not necessary for everyone, but its disadvantages are quite few nowadays.

It might be because I try to do as much as possible with Picasa (which does not have a great raw support) and compared to Picasa everything is sooo much slower. Lightroom is not bad and gives a bit better image quality, but all in all the slowdown is there. I have limited amount of time available for photography and spending hours and hours on one photo is just not what I enjoy anymore. Some day I might start with RAW again but at this time JPGs just make me happier. Plus every program can read it.

I think it’s also a myth that all professionals shoot raw. Think Ken Rockwell.

I’m a little bored that so much “serious” amateurs pride themselves so much that they shoot raw now. Most of my photos do lack in composition or lighting but not very often I miss the 5% gain I could get if I had shot it in RAW (which would have cost me say 20% of time and fun). Just my 2 cents.

Best regards,
Martin

I agree that nowadays the default functions in apps like Lightroom has made it faster to process RAW, but still without the background in photo processing, a newbie will be better off shooting in JPG.

However, after using Lightroom for some time and installing it on Linux (it can be done…) I’ve noticed that timewise there really isn’t a difference in processing time between raw or jpg. So now I shoot in raw whenever I’m shooting something more creative than a walk around with our dogs.

When photographing dogs I mostly use jpg, since I need the increase in buffer size.