Digital BW, The Print

You original question said "printer" not driver. To get the answer 
to this you need to be precise and remember what you asked.

It is quite difficult for a printer to represent 255 shades of grey 
let alone anything more. Most cannot get to 255 shades of grey. 
Hence 8 bit at the printer is fine and what is usual.

However because of all the layers of software in a driver or a RIP 
(that might include a CMM and serious ICC transforms) there is 
reason to use more than 255 so that the first limitation that occurs 
is that of the printer itself and other rounding errors in the 
software do not dominate.

As I recall the Windows driver and the Mac driver too are (or were) 
limited to 8 bits. This is potentially a limitation whereas 8bits at 
the printer is not.

...John 

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Tom Husband" 
<thusband@s...> wrote:
> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Scott 
Graham" 
> <gebilwil@n...> wrote:
> > 97.3% sure all printers (Epson etc) use 8 bits max.  Would be a 
> waste to use 16 bit 
> > considering the dynamic range of paper and ink.  
> > 
> > I often edit in 16 bit, but convert to 8 for printing and for 
> saving (of flattened print files).
> > 
> > Scott
> 
> Right.  I would agree with 8 bit on the Epson driver but I'm not 
sure 
> about using QTR.
> 
> Tom