| No doubt that *working* in 16-bit is slightly better than 8. Bit JPEG only supports 8 bits per channel, as do most monitors and printers. So the end result is only going to be 8 bit unless you only output TIFF and output to true 16 bit per channel devices. So really, all that working in 18 bits buys you is fewer round off errors. It's worth working with 16 bits for that reason, especially if you are making large scale changes to an images, but not really all that big a deal most of the time.
BTW, I have no idea the extent which Elements does or does not support 16-bit processing. I'd imagine the RAW processing component - ACR - does. |