8 bit vs 16 bit workflow
8 bit vs 16 bit workflow
- Subject: 8 bit vs 16 bit workflow
- From: "Martin [apple account]" <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 03 Aug 2001 09:37:55 +0100
The debate on 8 bit vs 16 bit colour is hotting up on Dan Margulis's Color
Theory mailing list.
Dan's position is that in "real life" retouching there are no visible
benefits to working with 16 bit images.
And further, that if you take an original image in 16 bit, duplicate it,
dump it to 8 bit and carry out a whole bunch of complex corrections to both,
the final images are almost completely indistinguishable. The only
difference usually being an apparent softness in the 16 bit image (similar
to the softness you see when you compare a 100Mb scan with a 150Mb scan of
the same image).
This year marked a decade of scanning and retouching for me. In those ten
years I've seen a handful of images that have left me thinking that I should
have been working in 16 bit (most of them scanned from colour negative).
Lots of people here advocate 16 bit workflow, but can anybody provide
conclusive "real world" proof of the benefits of 16 bit acquisition and
manipulation? (The only caveat I suggest is that the images supplied as
proof should be "real" not some computer generated test target).
My own experiments tend to support Dan's case (comparing 8 bit and 14 bit
scans from drum, CCD and Volare camera).
The majority of our images are scanned between 75 and 200 megs (RGB). If we
seriously look at doubling this data and losing 85 per cent of Photoshop's
capabilities there had better be some good reasons to do so!
--
Martin
Idea Digital Imaging Ltd - the "image" specialists
http://www.idea-digital.com