What is the RAW converter?

In the dpreview.com review of the Olympus C5050 it says it lacks a RAW

converter? If the converter just converts internally to other file

formats why would its absence be such a disadvantage. Can someone explain?

Raw files are the raw data from the CCD and need to be converted to another file format before they become useable. On the other hand, they provide the same lossless quality of a TIFF in a third the space or less, and may even capture more information than gets put in the tiff which has already been processed on camera.

To get from the raw CCD data to the saved JPEG, there are a number of processing steps the camera applies to the data. There is the Bayer de-mosaic, white-balancing, tone adjustment, color saturation adjustment, sharpeing, and JPEG compression. If you shoot in raw mode, the camera simply saves the raw CCD data without doing any of the above steps.

 

When you open the file in the raw converter, you can choose the settings for the steps. You can change the white balance settings or the tone settings or the sharpening settings etc. So you don't have to get the camera settings 100% right at the time of the shot. This is a huge advantage (especially the white balance).