Dear RAW, Where Have You Been All My Life?

Several years ago I spent some serious money on a Canon T2i. It was a purchase that has paid off many times over. I took pictures of my own kids plus the other kids in the family. I've taken family portraits for my relatives, and I've even done some senior portraits for students who couldn't really afford to pay real photographers for sittings and prints. Because of my busy schedule, I never spent too much time experimenting beyond the automatic settings. However, I've recently been taking advice from friends and watching and reading tutorials on the Internet. I stepped out of my comfort zone, set the camera to RAW instead of JPEG, and I sure am happy that I did. I knew a few tricks in Photoshop: image and hue adjustments, stamping corrections, cropping, and resizing. I wish I'd have tried photographing in RAW before today. Editing would've been a lot easier. This is my first try at it, and I'm already impressed with the results--faster and simpler edits with an impressive, professional-looking image in the end. This image above is of my two-year-old, Abigail. My older daughter, Breelyn, and I threw a dress on her, made her walk around the backyard, and snapped a few pictures so that I could do some trial runs. I LOVE THEM! I'll be studying more about RAW so that I can get more photos like this one!