I recently had some prints made from photos I took with my digital SLR. I am not impressed with the quality--they are very grainy and some have a slight blur. Is this because of the picture format? I can shoot JPEG, RAW, and others. Which file type should I use, and for what occasion would I use others?--Dennis Burdick, The Villages, Florida

Most digital SLRs and even many point and shoot cameras give you the option of JPEG or RAW, Dennis. Some cameras also throw in the TIF format. In general, most people will get the best results from their camera's highest quality JPG mode. The RAW format captures more color and exposure information than is visible in the JPG, which is ideal if you plan to edit the photo afterwards in a program like Adobe Photoshop. (Read "" for more on this.) But if you aren't the sort of person who tinkers with your photos, avoid the RAW format; it isn't white balanced or sharpened, so unedited RAW results are generally inferior to a well-shot JPEG.

In your specific case, grain and blur are not the sort of thing caused by--or solved by--any particular file format. Instead, those are issues that can be fixed by learning the photography basics, like how to use your ISO, shutter speed, and aperture. For tips on dealing with common photo problems like the ones you describe, read "."