Hi,
I've used my new QHY8 with a couple of bits of software. For imaging the easiest to use is Nebulosity from Stark Labs.
There is nothing to install for Nebulosity to work (other than the QHY8 drivers) as support for the cam is built in. The real upside is that Craig Stark, the author of the program owns a QHY8, so support is damn near perfect.
Note that the current version defaults to a gain of 1, and an offset of 130. These values are good starting points, (and what Craig Stark uses himself) you can adjust them after you have a feel for the camera (my 8 use gain=1 and offset = 114). It also has some basic, but very nice image processing features built in - calibration,, stacking, DDP etc, all for $45US. HIGHLY recommended.
Maxim is over rated, (its debayering sucks big time) if you want to go to something sophisticated, I believe ImagesPlus is very nice and very popular with one shot color uses.
DeepSkyStacker is free, but seems to consistently overcorrect flat fields, so I no longer use it (my experience is the same as a number of other QHY8 users I know).
Iris is free, and has one absolutely invaluable command known as SUBSKY which in one simple command will correct gradients across an image - worth the download just for that....as well as a myriad of other features that I have yet to master.
If you have Adobe Photoshop, the $20us buys a set of actions known as ASTROTOOLS from
http://www.ProDigitalSoftware.com
These automate a number of Photoshop processes and make stuff happen even if you don't know Photoshop!!
Hope this helps, just my opinions, worth every cent you paid for them
Gary