Sorry if it has been said somewhere else but my search did not yield any conclusive answer

The way I am thinking of using Qimage is to directly open the RAW images, do some necessary adjustments and print.

so my question 1: is can I be guaranteed that the raw is NEVER altered in any way, shape or form. I see my raws as a digital negative and would never temper with it (which is why I immediately disqualified Nikon Capture for example)

Question 2: I own a Nikon D1X which I love, but this little bugger seems to have a very special way of handling it's raw files, it can be a 6MP or 10MP file depending on how the raw is developed. Some raw converters default to 6MP, some to 10MP and some give the option and the result is not the same, at all. In order to test this, is there a demo version which allows to open RAW files ?

thanks for your time

Didier

Wow Terry, thanks for the offer, yes, if you're sure it's not too much of a bother I'd be glad to send you an image. The raw weights a bit less than 8 MB

thanks

Didier

To the OP - just curious....what changes does Nikon Capture NX2 make to the original NEF file that you object to?

I use NX2 as my main photo software. It doesn't change the original NEF in any way at all. It just adds edit steps which are completely reversible. The NEFs are never changed.

Mike

Nikon Capture doesn't change the raw data in the file, but it _does_ write the settings (and possibly history) to the NEF, and does update the thumbnail/preview in the NEF.  So while it isn't changing the actual raw data, it is changing the physical file.