[Zig]

Ta for all your work here Pol and for everyone else's input.
I had been of the mind that dng was just the Adobe Thought Police making everyone do the show their way...yet now am seeing the venture as positive. In fact, Adobe's efforts would seem to be battling on us plebs' behalf by wresting the show back from proprietary makes' closed-shop approach.
Toad, I've been aware for some time of your frustration with Nikon in this area: in fact, it is this very issue that prompted me, when I finally went digi a few months ago, to go for Canon(my previous 35mm gear had been the good ol' chunky Nikon F4). Thus, in relief, I have to say that Canon's own software does the biz fine(though I mostly use Raw Shooter Essentials and hardly ever Adobe Raw).
Pete and Schell(though you're probably aware of this anyway): I suppose the way to see it, is that our digital cameras don't actually "take pics", but record data(well, clumsy and untrue perhaps, but it's how I conceptualise it). By shooting raw, you already capture more stuff than if shooting jpeg...which in laypersons' terms, kinda filters much of the data out. Now, if one keeps as much of that data as poss through the processing, er, process...one ends up with more detail by only converting to a jpeg at the end.
I'm far from an expert with digital cameras or PS, and there are many more knowledgeable heads on these boards, but the following works for me(and like everyone else, I'm in a learning process myself, so I might change my mind in a week or three!). This is what I do:
1. Take raw pic
2.Convert the raw(CR2 in my case) to TIFF in either Canon Raw Converter or Raw Shooter Essentials.
3.Prat about with/butcher TIFF
4. Resize
5.Convert to 8bit
6.Convert to jpeg
7. Sharpen
I'm NOT saying this is THE way...there are as many opinions as people have airholes; it's just what I've learned to do since September.
(Sorry to have gone off topic; just trying to help)