[langman78 (Ben)]

A question I've mean meaning to ask for years.
Is there a significant advantage over processing RAW files over TIFF?
My cracked version of photoshop 6 (plz spare me the lectures of using an illegal copy folks) won't open my CR2 files. I've always just converted to a 16 bit TIFF file and gone from there.
Reluctant to try a plugin as it may stop my photoshop from working.
TIFF probably ok for general photography but when it comes to AP.....as most of you are aware, it's an entirely different ball game.
And to save me from posting another thread, just curious about what format is it best to save your completed processed image? I know the golden rule of thumb is to always keep your RAW for future tweaking (of course assuming you can open RAW in photoshop) but I guess let's just say your 100% happy and you know no future processing will occur....are you best just to save as a jpeg or TIFF?
Tutorials I've seen and read have had folks save in TIFF format after processing. If you ditch the original RAW and keep the TIFF....can you achieve the same processing adjustments of that compared to a RAW if you choose to process again? I'm also lead to believe and correct me if I'm wrong that printed TIFF images are superior to that of jpeg visually, especially when it comes to cropped images.
Thanks for reading folks and any feed back would be appreciated.
Ben