Digital BW, The Print

> From: Tom Baker [mailto:tbaker1328@...]
>
> I'm beginning to wonder about the actual visual degredation as
> well.  I want to get some time to try to prove/dis-prove this.
> At least to my own satisfaction.
>
> I believe that there is probably a lot of math/science that says
> there is degradation.  But, I want to see under my particular
> conditions and expectations.

For the most part, the answer to the question depends upon how much noise
(either CCD noise or film grain) is in the image. If the peak-to-peak
amplitude of the noise is more than about four or five (in an eight-bit
image), then there is nothing to be gained by preserving more than eight
bits of resolution.

In practice, this means that for inexpensive, small-CCD digicams, eight bits
is enough, but for better digicams (e.g., 10D) or film scanners, you can
indeed see posterization in an 8-bit image.

--

Ciao,               Paul D. DeRocco
Paul                mailto:pderocco@...