Quote Originally Posted by Ronnoco
The difference is that in digital editing in RAW, you are introducing noise and other problems into the whole photo, while in jpeg you can control the noise or other problem to an extremely small area of the photo by selecting a small part of the photo to adjust. This is a very important difference.
That is true. You are making global changes when you make adjustments to the RAW file. They don't have to be huge adjustments though and you will usually get a better result from the 12-bit, if you're careful. It is very possible to get overzealous with the RAW and make a mess of an image, though. You can do the same thing with a JPEG, though. I don't think most people really know how to make selective adjustments.

The best workflow is to use a RAW converter for an initial global adjustment. How much and what you do depends on the image, your style, and the capabilitise of the RAW converter you're using. After you make your global adjustment and convert to a TIFF, then you open it in Photoshop and make any selective adjustments you might want. Every step taken should be done to prepare the file for the next step. I shoot for the highlights so that they aren't blown out. I convert for an overall color balance, saturation, contrast, etc; making sure not to lose the highlights. Then I make final, selective adjustments using Photoshop masked adjustment layers.