On 15 May 2005 at 17:54, William Robb wrote: > Sadly, it also depends on 8 bit printer outputs, or have printers gone 16 > bit without me noticing?
Yes I think virtually all printers currently are 8 bits only, the process really wouldn't benefit from more data per colour channel using current ink print output technologies though I suspect that some cont-tone digital printers might benefit. Assuming that an image has been well captured/scanned and processed the black and white points will translate directly from 16 bit to 8 bits without distortion. What the bit depth transformation does is make the transitional steps between adjacent brightness levels on each colour channel more abrupt by dividing the range into fewer steps. The key to producing quality 8bit files for electronic display or print is to convert your file to 8bits/cc as the very last process in the work-flow. The physical indication of insufficient source image data depth is banding in a print. Therefore if a print from an 8bit file displays no banding then there would likely be limited benefit feeding the printer with greater data depth. As printer ink gamuts, media and direct digital to paper print improves 8bits/cc may become a limition, but now I suspect it's not. (And just to qualify that previous statement before I get jumped on, I'm implying that print technology may become much better than the current analogue processes, I'm not suggesting that current digital print technology is inferior to analogue processes). Cheers, Rob Studdert HURSTVILLE AUSTRALIA Tel +61-2-9554-4110 UTC(GMT) +10 Hours [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://members.ozemail.com.au/~distudio/publications/ Pentax user since 1986, PDMLer since 1998
