Digital BW, The Print

Where are actually the bottlenecks of a 16 bit workflow ?

True 16 bit scanning is possible on some scanners meanwhile, the
difference with the ones that do a 14 bit A/D conversion will be
hardly noticeable.
Bitmap editors like PWP and PS now allow full 16 bit editing.
At the end of the workflow the printer engine itself will be only
available as 8 bit, if it actually produces 255 steps per colour
on the paper we will already be very happy and probably we will
never notice it when it produces only 230 steps or less. Are
there 16 bit printengines ? Lightjets etc ? That it will only
show in transparencies is another matter.

What is more of a question is what printer drivers actually do.
The printer drivers usually work with a 16 bit conversion table
internally to get better rounding off. That is always used
whether it is getting 8 bit or 16 bit channel data as its source.
Windows reduces all printerdriver output data to 8 bit when it
uses the Windows spooling. There are ways to overcome that but
when the printerengines don't take higher than 8 either it has no
sense. Gimp-print used 16 bit conversion tables but I really do
not know how much 16 bit it is throughout now, no 8 bit filter at
the input ?, no 8 bit filter at the output?  Same questions for
OS X. I also wonder whether the Epson drivers normally filter the
input to 8 bit and only use 16 bit conversion tables internally
to drop to 8 bit as soon as possible again. Speed is a factor in
all that.

Roy must know the Gimp-print details .............

Ernst