But my point Guy is that for most amateurs you just don't need to do this - you want an email? there are sensible email options which put it in an email. You want a web page? you can publish it direct from the progam. You want a printed album? put in your credit card and it's there!
Creating 3 different file types is a nightmare with respect to cataloguing and storage, and for most people it really isn't necessary.
Keep the RAW file and that's ALL YOU NEED.
Jono,
While I would agree with you that this is pretty much true for most folks, it does not always work for folks that have to go back to shots and reprint them or something like that. In that case, having saved all the various tweaks and adjustments in something like a multi-layered PSD file is important. Further, presently, I do one kind of sharpening for display in Web galleries and stuff, but apply a different kind of sharpening for making prints....and even that is media dependent (canvas, luster, glossy, etc.)
So, keeping just the RAW, even with the preliminary adjustments, is important and can be done in Aperture or Lightroom. But a final version that may have to be reprinted several times and maybe at later dates, does better being stored separately as a 16-bit PSD file with all the various layers and stuff. That is the one place where Aperture (and Lightroom) fall down....they are unable to handle layers of instruction sets that can be tweaked separately, as is done in PS. I hope they find a way to manage that without having to essentially save two, three, six, or however many "versions" of adjustments that are TIFF or PSD files themselves, but without layer access.
I have several clients that have come to me a few years after buying prints and wanting more of those exact prints. If I had not saved the PSD files at the time, I would be struggling to figure out just what I did with adjustments, cloning, etc., to get the final file. If one does not shoot and process things like this, then you are correct, just save the RAW file and whatever adjustment instruction sets that need to go with it.
LJ