Gaps in the histogram don't necessarily mean printing problems. Studies done with this in 8-bit show that as few as 40 levels still left often produce prints that are indistinguishable to those manipulated in 16-bit with many more levels. I suspect this is why Adobe is dragging its heels in providing full 16-bit support. All the technoweenies demand it but Adobe knows it ain't all that damned big of a deal: it just puts more pressure on RAM, hard drive space, and computer horsepower.
And, on the same general topic, many tests have been done comparing medium-level jpegs printed and compared to tiffs or other loseless files, and again, "experts" have a hard time telling the difference.
I've done a lot of experimenting with 8- vs 16-bit, and jpeg vs tiff; my findings are that the theoreticians are technically correct, but in most cases, you can violate the "rules", even flagrantly, and see no noticable difference.
Herb's suggestion to do a Photoshop difference will show pixels changing. Can you see it on the print, though? That's always the ultimate arbitrator for me.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Yes, but what bit depth do you save in? If it's 8 bit and do much in Curves or Levels there'll be all sorts of gaps in the histogram, that can be seen in prints. It's much more visable hit than repeated high quality JPG saves. Unless I know I'm going to probably do something later to a scan, and save in PSD, I do all my work in 16 bit, convert to 8 bit and then save in JPG, quality level 10. This creates a file that is suitable for any printing that I need. If I will need prints in a particular size, I crop and resize to that size print and then usually down sample to 300 dpi and do a "save as...".
"Herb Chong" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
that is why i scan and manipulate in 16-bit mode and use 12-bit RAW mode now.
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