Of course, my version of Elements is one rev too old to use the plugin that works for my new camera :-(
The reason that photographers like RAW file formats is that ALL Digital Cameras apply all sorts of "wizardry" to the raw image data captured by the sensor before they output that JPEG or TIFF file. They
have to. The raw sensor data isn't "right". Just like a printer or a monitor, it has certain sensitivities to certain bands of the light spectrum, which vary with wavelength. Plus, almost all raw sensor data is VERY soft. All digital photos need some amount of sharpening.
The sensor sees what it sees, and has certain performance characteristics, which they model, and then they have algorithms built into the CMOS of the camera that add sharpening in this amount and shift the color from this to this, and remap pixels from this scale to this scale, and so on and so forth, to make the JPEG you get in the end better approximate what you "saw" with your eye through the viewfinder.
So, you need to process them.
The question becomes, do you want them to be processed automatically, or by hand?
In many cases, the automatic processing is just over-the-top. This is one of the big reasons that you don't see many pro photographers carrying around Sony DSLRs. They go bat-crazy on the sharpening and color saturation (or they used to, last time I cared about that world). Canon and Nikon tend to be the most "respectful". The other, more consumer focused cameras, tend to just try to make pictures reliably what "regular people like and want".
But even if the processing isn't over the top, is it right for what you were shooting? Those automatic schemes can be controlled somewhat on the camera (usually via different "scene modes", you know for night, and daytime, and indoor, and portraits, and whatnot). It isn't like those modes are flipping between different sensors! They're just tweaking the post-processing filtering systems used (and setting different aperture, exposure, and iso settings).
The problem is that if it is wrong, or too much, or bad, you cannot "undo". If all you have is the already-altered JPEG, you're stuck with it. You can modify what is there, but you can't "undo" the damage done by the automated filters. Once image data is destroyed by a sharpening system, it is destroyed, and there's no going back.
Using RAWs and a nice RAW workflow system (like the one in Lightroom, which is really superb), lets you apply those filters yourself. Applying just the right amount of sharpening, but not too much. Just the right color balance for that particular composure. And, it lets you do it in a non-destructive way, because you always still have the RAW image data there, you're just
interpreting it differently. Now, that doesn't mean you have to hand tweak every single photo. A good tool will let you define your own presets (and even gives you ones specially designed for your camera's sensor), and then tweak them just slightly as needed to "fix" a slightly oversharpened or underexposed image.
It is fantastic for saving a shot that otherwise would have been ruined on a consumer DSLR. And, more importantly, you can
always undo.
Make sense?
