Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "Austin Franklin" <darkroom@i...> 
wrote:

> But the histogram IS an 8 bit histogram...  It should look the same,
> providing no tonal adjustments are done, and I don't believe simply
> converting from 16 bit to 8 bit should do that...it only "lops" off the
> lower 8 bits.

Photoshop shows all histograms as "8 bit." If it had to show you a level for 
every possible step in 16 bit (64000 odd levels), the display would have to be 
the size of a small bus! So when you view a Histogram in high bit (what 
Photoshop calls 16bit), you're not seeing what is really going on in that 
Histogram. But you still have all the data in that file to manipulate. Once you 
convert to 8 bits per color (on a copy), now you are seeing the "real" 
distribution of the 256 levels of data. So the combs should be long gone. 

Bottom line is that when you have a high bit file and you manipulate it, you 
can use the Histogram provided but the preview showing the data or combing 
isn't accurate. You still have many, many steps that end up producing the best 
256 levels once you convert down to 8 bits and you should see a nice, 
smooth histogram.