Just after having released the first digiKam version 0.8.0 during august 2005, I have started to work on 0.9.0 features. The main goal of this release has been to support 16 bits color depth images including RAW pictures.

At this date, Renchi Raju (the digiKam project former) has left the team and is going to work with PalmOs in California... But before leaving the digiKam project, he has provided a great first implementation of a new internal digiKam API named DImg to support 16 bits color depth images...

Until now, I have worked hard to improve this API and I've been assisted by Marcel. We have created a very well documented API similar to QImage, but on top of it with an implementation for loading and saving files featuring
a progress bar and full control over the loading process (loading thread).