What is the advantage of a RAW file over a lossless tif file?
There is one major difference: a raw file is exactly that. Raw CFA samples off of an image sensor. There is no associated color space, and usually the file is actually just a monochrome file with some tags to tell the raw converter how to interpret the samples to make a color image.
A lossless tif file on the other hand is post raw conversion. For color it has 3 samples per color and the samples conform to a color space. The file usually has an ICC profile embedded in it. The samples are typically gamma encoded or something like 2.2. A lossless tif file is typically bigger than a raw file because the raw file is the rggb samples and the tiff file has been debayered into rgb samples for each pixel.
You can think of a raw file as a developed film negative. It has image data but needs more work/processing to get a usable image. The lossless tif can be thought of as an optical print of a film negative in that you did some work to get a usable image. That’s a simplified difference between the two. You can’t really say one has an advantage over the other one because that’s like asking what the advantage of a film negative over a print is. They’re not the same thing.
