RAW, or raw?

[jiminyClickit]

http://www.photo.net/learn/raw/

This article/discussion produced a coma-like sensation when I tried to read to the end. The one point that answered my curiosity was that RAW is not an acronym, that at some point for some reason it started being capitalized. So, like an uncooked vegetable, a raw photo file has not been boiled, baked, or fried into a jpeg or any other file conversion. All the original information going from object to camera sensor is maintained intact.

Does anyone know if that's a fact, or does RAW mean something?

[stuart]

its an interesting way of putting it ,i think thats the case but im not sure either ,ill keep an eye on your post to see what other answers you get,sorry i cant be more clear ,i think compression has somethink to do with it

[wulf]

I believe that is correct - RAW just means the raw information, so you can process it with an external computer rather than the one in your camera.

Wulf

[RainPacket]

RAW isn't even a format, as such. Canon 'CR2' files are different than Nikon's RAW files, etc. This is why you need things like Apple's 'Camera Raw' library or Adobe's RAW support or whatnot. And why you'll see things like, 'Added support for Canon EOS 400D raw sensor data format' in the changelog.

I think the reason it became capitalized is people are used to seeing file-types capitalized. MP3, JPG, PNG, GIF, SWF, FLV, OGG, etc... so people probably just thought of it as a file format itself and started referring to it as 'RAW.'