Microsoft HD Photo Plug-in for Adobe Photoshop

[Robbie Khan Reviews]

I'm not sure you understood me correctly. I said "option" as in you could both get the raw data and the raw data converted to the HD Photo format. I know raw isn't a format, it's just pure data from the CCD. HD Photo however is capable of storing that raw data in a lossless standardized format which must be easier for photographers to work with rather then having a separate tool or codec for every camera type right?

How can you not want a standardized format to store the raw data in?

HD Photo was designed to be able to store that sensor data without losing any information (that includes maintaining bit-depth, color information, adding metadata etc.).

In that regards yes but it's still no replacement for RAW and looking at the lossless profile for HDP the filesize is larger than the RAW in teh first place, photographers that are established in their workflow already are not going to change from jpeg previews and a RAW workflow even with the good sides of HDP in view - it's already fast enough to load a raw, export it to photoshop with RAW eidting in place and print for example.