Digital BW, The Print

Until (or if) PS does get more 16-bit support, for Windows users, 
Picture Window Pro can do many of the 16-bit operations that 
Photoshop can't. Everything in PWP works in with either 8-bit 
or 16-bit files. Go to http://www.dl-c.com for a 30-day evaluation 
copy. PWP does not do layers, though they can be emulated with 
compositing. It makes a quite decent "pre-processor" for 16-bit 
images that require some of the things Photoshop does in 8-bit 
that PWP can't do and at least for the kinds of work I do handles 
most of what I need without ever going to Photoshop.

- David

= = = Original message = = =

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "Martin Wesley" 

< Layers and Channels. Without layers and alpha channel masking 

Photoshop is seriously crippled in 16-bit mode in my opinon. 


Layers would be nice. But if you are past the point of doing 
corrections and it's 
time for creative stuff, then you *could* downsample to 8 bits 
and go at it. The 
benifits of high bit (doing those tonal and color corrections 
that would lose 
data) have been taken care of. But yes, give the choices, I'd 
love to composite 
in 16 bit. 

As for channels, you can still do a lot in 16 bit on an 8 bit 
copy. You can load 
any of the channels from the 8 bit file to the 16 bit file as 
long as both files 
have the identical pixel count. So I dupliate the 16 bit file, 
drop it down to 8 bit, 
make my channles and move the over to the 16 bit file. Again, 
if I could do this 
without the extra work, it would be nice. 

>You are also missing a lot tools as well,
> Sharpen, Blur and Smudge Tool, Dodge, Burn and Saturate Tool, 
Eraser,
> Paintbrush, Magic Wand Tool, Color Range Select, etc.

Well Gaussian Blue and USM are 16 bit filters. 

> You can make due but life would be simpler if you had the choice 
to stay in
> high bit mode. This would be the biggest upgrade Adobe could 
make to PS. 

Well keep telling them this and you might see it someday. I know 
I (and 
people I hang with like Jeff Schewe) keep telling them that. 
Nothing would 
make me happier to see far more high bit support in the next 
version. 
I'm not sure how many copies that would sell but there is a hard 
core group of 
PS users that have been asking for this for a long time. 


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