Re: 8 verses 16 bit

[Raphael Bustin <rafeb@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 07:05 PM 3/4/02 -0800, David Chien wrote:


>   What is tough is to manipulate prints w/o rough banding and effects
>when making lots of changes to the image.


So don't.  Presume that your scanner is working internally with 16 or
more bits (it's a pretty safe bet.)  Do the major color moves in the
scanner driver -- Curves, Levels, but most importantly, the exposure
adjustment.  Leave the last 20% of the tweaks for Photoshop, or
your image-editor of choice.

That way you'll avoid major data loss due to color moves, even if
the image was only imported as 8 bits.

You seem to be most concerned with the effects on histograms, but
I'm far less concerned with histograms than the photo itself.

I've said it before:  having those extra bits allows you to carry some
of the "sloppiness" further up the processing chain before
irreparable harm is done.  That is the main advantage, IMHO.
If you take care from the outset to capture the best image
possible, you can do great work at 24 bits (8 bits/color.)

Have you tried the experiment I suggested (Image->Adjust->
Posterize, in Photoshop) ?



rafe b.

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