Hi Paul,
I normally set the 300D to Highest JPEG setting and auto White Balance. I have not yet seen any significant advantage in working with RAW's. Just adds about an hour to the processing time!! JPEG's seem fine, and although the purists will argue till the cows come home, jpegs work for me just fine!
Gary has a good point, but I have stuck to Phop for large images. Each to there own... Full credit. I here MaximDL is pretty good too...
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Cheers