Yes I'm aware, I've had to debayer imagery from industrial cameras and worked on media forensics. I think we are on the same page but commenting past each other

Yes I'm aware, I've had to debayer imagery from industrial cameras and worked on media forensics. I think we are on the same page but commenting past each other. The problem is vendors all seem to have their own definition of what RAW means nowadays. But the typical meaning is one with the raw pixels via color filter array (eg bayer8), and need debayering (to get the usual rgb8). You can have raw/Bayer Tiffs, I've worked with them. So the file format is not enough, you gotta know the image encoding. "RAW just means uncompressed" yes that is technically wrong, but the point I'm addressing is "You can still manipulate a RAW image" and "without the painting-like qualities of its default image processing." It does not matter what the color encoding is, you can still do painting-like processing. I've literally worked on detectors that detect manipulation of RAW, Bayer array images. This is not theoretical. I guess what I am saying is, Apple giving the user a raw/.dng file is not a guarantee you are actually getting the ADC output straight from the sensor. Really, the operant question is "what is the processing provenance of this image".