| to take one minor quote of a contrarian to Dan:
Bruce Fraser - 1:07pm Sep 19, 05 PST
I'd also suggest that you need to weigh the consequences of working in 8-
bit and finding you need 16 versus working in 16-bit and finding you only
need 8. My lack of clairvoyance is one of the factors that leads me to work in
16-bit....
Great ! Plan ahead :-)) Thinking like this was the reason I started using 16 bit
processing, I did 16 bit for several years and after a talk with a friend who also
did 16 bit, we decided to try the 8 bit mode. Neither of us saw a difference in output, I do print more and didn't see it there either. Since I've upgraded my programs and work flow from what I used at that time, it may be time to revisit
16 bit processing.
'Something that sticks in my mind is as sensors and circuits get better the gap between 8 and 16 bit processing (if you believe there is one) could increase...'
This is the area to really watch, I suspect in the near future that all equipment
will move to a 16 bit friendly environment. From some of the charts I've seen of camera color space vs. RGB color space, Brand X already surpasses RGB foot print.
I'm sure this will lead to all brands shortly. Once this is main stream, we should be able to see the difference in print. Right now the only time I run into problems is when I shrink the image and make a JPG. Banding shows up.
'The 8 vs 16 bit debate is based mostly on "after conversion". I think few would argue that during RAW conversion you should most likely work in at least 12 bit integer math... some state anything short of floating point math is destructive (though slow on many systems and therefore not socially acceptable)
Very few would argue that the RAW data has less than 9 fully useable bits (some seem to believe that 10 is easy and 11 is becoming standard today. Of course marketing is pushing 14 bits) so again 8 in RAW IS destructive.'
You just jumped WAY beyond me :-) My programming experience and what goes on in the machine dates from 1970.......lol.
'Now I'm only speculating based on what I read and the use of a few RAW converters and photo editing software... and I'm miffed at the 16bit TIFF lie '
The program I'm waiting for is the one where you process the RAW file Completely
in the converter with out having to use another program for tweeking. |