Canon 650D (T4i): RAW settings, what affect it?

Lemming51 wrote:

The RAW file embeds the settings for Color Space, Picture Style, White Balance, Peripheral Illumination Correction, Chromatic Aberration Correction, Auto Lighting Optimizer, High ISO Noise Reduction. These settings are applied as the defaults for the RAW file image, but can be reversed/changed in Canon's DPP and other third party post-processing software.

interesting.

so I assume that this data about "picture style", "color space", "Auto Lighting Optimizer", "High ISO Noise Reduction".... are saved only as information in some kind of metadata WITHOUT altering actual RAW pixel data and than Canon DPP or other third party software (LightRoom or Aperture?) recreate effect of "picture style", "color space", "Auto Lighting Optimizer", "High ISO Noise Reduction"... upon loading picture?

right?

thanx for answer!

I think Burnie answered this, so I'll try to add to it -- the RAW file is what the sensor captures. To create a jpeg, several steps of processing are applied, and then the image is compressed.

Some if those processing steps are necessary, such as White Balance. The RAW image contains a much wider range than the jpeg will hold, and more range than a screen or printer can render, as well. If you shoot jpeg and the white balance is wrong, correcting it might degrade image quality. But changing white balance of a RAW file doesn't change the file at all.

There's a great explanation of it here:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/u-raw-files.shtml