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Digital BW, The Print

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RE: [Digital BW] 8 bit color -> 16 bit grayscale conversion

2003-12-12 by Tom Baker

If one were 'adding' the values together, you'd be on the right track.  However, it is per color channel that these values are applied.  So, 8 bits is 256 values per channel.  However, if you have a value of 220 in a channel and convert it to 16bit, you still don't have any more real data than you did before.  You only have a 16 bit value with the same real value.  
 
Tom Baker

"Paul D. DeRocco" <pderocco@...> wrote:
> From: Manuel Toledo Quinones [mailto:mtoledo@...]
>
> Usually shoots digital raw to preserve 16 bits per channel and avoid
> deterioration when processing the images. However, it occurs to me
> that if one is shooting color with 8 bits/channel, there are already
> 24 bits of information. If the image is then converted to 16 bit
> grayscale mode, all bits contain information and there should be no
> empty bins in the histogram due to lack of intensity resolution. The
> quality of the 16 bit image should be adequate to tolerate processing.

Not true. With three channels of 8 bits, that's roughly equal to 9.5 bits,
because the maximum value you can get by adding three 255's together is 765,
which takes about 9.5 bits to represent.

--

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


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