OpenRAW

I beg to differ with your assertion that shooting RAW as opposed to jpeg is only of use to professional photographers. A RAW file provide several significant benefits over shooting jpeg:
1) A 'digital negative' containing the exact data that the camera captured with no adjustment made by the camera.
2) No compression artifacts or missing data that you will get when shooing jpeg.
3) A 12 bit file in a 16 bit space as opposed to a compressed file (usually 3 bit) in an 8 bit space.
4) Ability to do the Bayer pattern interpolation on a PC/MAC with significantly more accuracy.
5) Ability to significantly adjust exposure up to +/- 2 stops or more without ruining the image.
6) Ability to adjust color balance very accurately.

Even if you are just shooting snap shots of your family, I’m sure that you have had more than one photo come out under of over exposed, or pick up an odd colorcast. Many of these issues can easily be corrected in the RAW conversion software. A jpeg file with the same exposure or color cast problem will be more difficult if not impossible to fix without ruining the resulting image.

If you are shooting with a digicam with a small image sensor, shooting RAW will provide a very significant and visible improvement in the quality of the resulting images. The differences can often be seen even in 4x6 prints and are more pronounced in larger prints.

All of these benefits can be had for very little cost in hardware, software, or time to the photographer. Flash memory and hard disk space are dirt cheap, and will continue to drop in price over time.

Right on Jeff!

The improvement in the quality of the final raw file derived image is fact not fiction!