Re: 16 bits = 15 bits in Photoshop?
Re: 16 bits = 15 bits in Photoshop?
- Subject: Re: 16 bits = 15 bits in Photoshop?
- From: Marco Ugolini <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 15:03:37 -0700
In a message dated Mon, 18 Apr 2005 13:51:43 EDT, Dan Margulis wrote:
> Everybody now accepts that the machine readings are the start and not the end
> of the calibration process.
Whereas it started out with everybody saying that we should blindly and
uncritically trust the machine readings? I am old enough to remember all the
talk in those beginning days of color management about editing profiles to
remedy their obvious limitations. Which I didn't exactly take as an
indication of blind trust in machine readings.
> [...] now that even the color management extremists have adopted the position
> I've been taking for more than ten years, I don't even mind that they continue
> to demonize me out of force of habit.
Honestly, the oversimplification of color management's history is a bit
stunning here. I had no idea that you were such an inspiration in its
development...
And I also had no idea that, besides religion, we are here also engaging in
political-style smears: "color management extremists"? You know, there are
people of limited intellect in every endeavor. To assert that they are in
the saddle and are the driving force is quite tendentious and self-serving.
Does Don Hutcheson fit the "extremist" description?
>>> Let's start with a synthetic image.>>
> No, let's not. I specifically said a real-world color photograph, [...]
> [...]
>>> At the same URL, you can also go ahead and see for yourselves what happens
>>> to another grayscale image, a 16 bit scan I made some time back from a
>>> black & white film negative. >>
> Again, a real-world COLOR photograph, please.
Dan, there is no pleasing you! You ask for an example of banding, and I give
it to you. No good, because it's a synthetic image! Never mind that all it
was meant to do was alert people to an inherent weakness in the pixel
structure of an 8 bit image, which per se does NOT invalidate the whole
edifice of 8-bit imaging.
I give you another example, this one from a B&W 16-bit scan. No good,
because it's not color!
You keep raising the bar. What is your point, stated succinctly in a short
sentence, with all the fat trimmed out? That there are so few instances in
which 16 bits make a difference that it ultimately doesn't matter? Well, to
SOME people it DOES matter! And what about the FACT that there are
circumstances (extreme and rare as they may be, which should not matter for
the purpose of this discussion) in which banding DOES appear in 8 bit files,
whereas it does NOT in equivalent native 16 bit files subjected to the same
exact same treatment?
It's neither fair nor considerate to reply to all these concerns by just
saying that "we [you and Jim Rich] cannot demonstrate that there is ever any
advantage, and we both say that if somebody can demonstrate that there is,
with real-world images under real-world scenarios, that we have no problem
accepting that and that we would modify our workflows in certain
circumstances." At this point I honestly doubt that such statement is truly
candid. By now, you have too much invested in the contrary position.
Like Gallagher in his famous skit on the vagaries and inconsistencies of the
English language, I quit this sterile
"no-matter-what-you-say-I'll-tear-it-down"-style disquisition, lest I
develop a massive headache.
"Ai posteri l'ardua sentenza" (Manzoni, "Il Cinque Maggio")
Ciao.
--------------
Marco Ugolini
Mill Valley, CA
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