Hi! I am new to this board.

I am using PSPXI and am having trouble getting my pics to look as good as the JPG created in the camera. I have allways understood, that if you want the best picture, you shoot a RAW, then manipulate it in s'ware such as PSP. What am I doing wrong? Any tips?

Challenge: Below are links to a single exposure. Make the RAW look as sharp and pop like the in-camera JPG. Then tell me how the heck you did it.

This is one exposure. My Canon XTi was set for RAW+JPG (it makes 2 files with one click) and style to Standard w/ sharpness up 2 clicks from default. The cropped "E" JPG is after I tweaked the RAW in PSP. I used a Canon 70-200 IS 2.8 zoom with a 12mm extension tube (if you care about this stuff).

Camera JPG
http://home.comcast.net/~brucedebonis/misc/IMG_1839.JPG
Camera RAW
http://home.comcast.net/~brucedebonis/misc/IMG_1839.CR2
RAW processed in Corel
http://home.comcast.net/~brucedeboni.../IMG_1839E.jpg

Notes 1: I have always found in-camera white balance to be off so not all aspects of in-camera processing is great. But sharpness, contrast etc., the things that make a pic pop, well, I just can't match in the in-camera processing. Oh and the butterfly is a Cabbage White (that is its name!).

Notes 2: While I don't remember the setting in PSP I used for this pic, I can describe my typical process: 1) Crop, 2) adjust color balance, 3) Smart fix but turn everything to 0, tweak shadow/highlights/bright/saturation with black and white usually at 0 and never use the sharpness tool here, then 4) adjust sharpness where I usually use unsharp mask or high-pass depending on how much fine detail is in the pic.