Raw and PSE4, need help

[blurryday]

Hi
I've decided to start taking pics the RAW way with my Canon 350d. I have read the Missing Manual but still a little confused as to how this all works. Do I need to use the Converter or can I bypass it and how? I would like to to the same editing I do with JPEG...and that is using adjustment layers for levels, then hue/sat. Can someone give me some tips or guidelines? Or at maybe link to a thread already explaining this? (I didn't see a lot out there).
Thanks,
Ruth

[Carbone]

When you open a RAW file, you first go through Adobe Camera RAW, it's a converter that brings the RAW data into a format PSE can understand. Next, you click on Open and the image is transferred into PSE. From there you can save it as Photoshop file (PSD) or any other format you might like (JPEG, PNG, etc.)

Ray

[blurryday]

thank you!
Ruth