I'll ask our daughter who is a professional photographer and get back to you. She shoots in raw and edits before sending the photos to her customers, but I don't remember what software she uses. Of course, it takes a fast processor to process raw unless you want to claw your eyeballs out while waiting.
She lives in Atlanta, but has been hired to shoot a wedding this weekend in Philadelphia. Hopefully she'll answer me before she leaves.
EDIT: Here's what she said. (Sorry, she was in a grumpy mood yesterday. Not looking forward to driving to Philly. Can't fly because Delta flies a small plane there and won't let her take her equipment on. When she did a wedding in Cleveland, Delta
forced her and everyone else with more than a purse to do a gate check, they damaged some of her equipment, and they refused to reimburse her.).
for prints, whcc is the best. however you have to have a business to set up with it. all of the print places are like that, or at least all of the decent ones. shutterfly is crap.
need lightroom regardless, but it is a must have if shooting raw. every single raw image must be processed on the computer because the camera isn't doing the processing for you.
http://www.digital-photography-school.com/raw-vs-jpeg
there's one of about a million articles.
also, it depends on what kind of camera they're using and how much they know about photography. also, if they shoot in raw, they'll burn through CF cards in about 2 seconds. that's why i carry hundreds of gb of space with me.
there are just a lot of factors that make this an impossible question to answer not knowing anything about the person and their history. given the fact that they're asking, they should probably just shoot jpeg and do more research.
