My exile into the world of RAW has ended, and the conclusion is:-
general photography for day to day use, JPEG is perfectly fine, however if you have a specific photo in mind that you wish to put in a frame, put on display, or enter in a competition then RAW gives you the option to tweak, and manipulate, something that is limited in JPEG.
The use of RAW also comes with the requirement to learn how to use an editing software suite, as just shooting in RAW then doing a straight conversion to JPEG offers no advantage over shooting JPEG in the first place.
I have found though, that once the editing software has been mastered, then some of the techniques can be used to improve a JPEG, but I think this is another quest for someone else, as for now it's back to JPEG and Photoscape.
I have found Photoscape (
Photoscape : Free Photo Editing Software (Photo Editor) Download) , when you look in all its nooks and crannies, has a lot of the common functions that Paintshop Pro and Photoshop contain. Right........ having got that off my chest, its back to JPEG for a while, and on to my next quest......looking at the possibility of becoming invisible......I can't see it myself.