Yes—some important adjustments are better done in Camera Raw. Camera Raw works on the RAW data before demosaicing and before conversion to a standard raster image, color space, and bit depth. That means controls like white balance and exposure can use more of the original sensor data than equivalent edits made later in Photoshop.

Once the image is opened into Photoshop, you’re no longer working directly with the RAW capture in the same way, so some latitude for exposure and color correction is reduced. Also, certain Camera Raw sliders don’t behave exactly like Photoshop adjustment layers.

A practical workflow is:

• use Camera Raw for “foundational” corrections: white balance, exposure, highlight/shadow recovery, lens/vignetting corrections
• then open into Photoshop for creative and local edits: layers, masks, retouching, compositing, painted adjustments

Opening as a Smart Object is useful because it lets you return to Camera Raw later for those RAW-stage edits. So if your goal is maximum flexibility and best technical quality, don’t skip Camera Raw entirely—use it first for core RAW adjustments, then Photoshop for the rest.