TOPIC: Do you release your photos to your client

Typically NO! - for the reason Scott said!...Remember, I'm in Illinois - " The Land of Lawyers"!

I keep all photos, usually 80 - 100 per inspection, in "raw" form but only use about half in the report. Like many, these are my "visual notes" and are not for client use. Anything that does make it to the report is carefully optimized, edited, cropped and annotated to best display the issue at hand. I take high res pics just for this. 4000 x 3000, so that I can crop and adjust and still have a usable pic in the end. And, NO, I do not provide my "notes" to a client, even if asked. If any written notes are taken, those get destroyed after the report is delivered. The report stands on its own.

All pics are worked over in third party software prior to report use and never added to the report in the field or using the built-in editor software found in most HI programs.

Shooting RAW for home inspections is interesting, suppose if you have the storage space and time to develop them that's a thing to do, but if you're using HIP it degrades the resolution substantially....are you gaining anything at the end of the day by doing this? 

I have a small photography business shooting real estate and structures primarily and shooting RAW is my standard mode, but I carry a pocket camera and shoot 2MP low compression for my inspection work.  The images are great since most are fairly close up.....but HIP still downgrades them markedly; to help manage the file sizes I imagine.

Not only no, but hell NO!
All my pics are filed for later use, by myself, if ever needed.
Nobody knows how many pic's you have in your possession, except yourself.
The client is not privy to all my business secrets, and they have no need to know.
This is a business, not a hobby. Treat it as such.

Barry...Not technically "Raw" format. Actually 4000 X 3000 resolution jpeg's for the fine detail and the ability to zoom and crop as needed. My actual process is to create a folder with the clients name and inspection date. In that I create two subfolders, one called " Pics" and the other called "Edits".  All of the original pictures at full resolution go into the pics folder that I use for reference. Many are just overall pictures of a room for identification of things such as wall finishes, flooring and anything special.  Out of those, I pick the ones I will be using in the report and drag them into the Edits folder. Those get resized down to 800x600, pulled into SnagIt editor for annotation and markup.

In my view, the client is entitled to the pictures that are going into the report ONLY. The rest are my notes and my personal property.

I do it pretty much the same way Dana.