'tis allready said...shoot Raw.  Now on Sunday, I took "snapshots' of a church picnic. That was jpg. Made sense for that.    Other pics I shoot raw not knowing "in fact" which is the one I truly want to make the best.  Agreed, print is the way to see the real difference and not in a small print.

Nikon allows "compressed raw" and uncompressed.  Both take a lot of space depending on your camera but are worth when you open an image then WISH you had taken it in raw.  Both the now bought out by Adobe "Rawshooter" and Adobe Lightroom do a credible job but there are other raw converters out there.              TomDart.