Digital BW, The Print

Ginny,

I think you missed John's point. You were talking about prints made from 
16bit and 8bit images on an 8bit printer, ie a printer whose driver 
downsamples 16bit files to 8bit before printing it.

John was making the point that some printers are now 16bit, ie their printer 
drivers can handle all 16bits, so you would have to repeat your tests with 
16bit and 8bit images printed on a printer with a 16bit driver.

In time, I expect many more printers will handle 16bit files, but until 
someone has done the comparisons with one of those printers, we won't know 
what the difference is, if any.

Bob Frost.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "ginnylady33" <ginnylady33@...>

  As I said,  I could not tell a 16 bit from an 8 bit print. Not one
of my discerning photographer friends could tell a 16 bit from an 8
bit print. If neither myself nor any of my 3 critical photographer
friends can tell an 8 bit from a 16 bit print, I'm not going to store
finished images at 16 bits. I value most what my eyes tell me
regarding image quality. The prints made from 8-bit files look just great!
 I welcome you to store your images in 16 bit format. But, I would
seriously doubt that one can tell the difference between a 16 bit and
8 bit print.
 Let's really investigate the matter...setup a double blind study.
Let's do it. It must truly be double-blinded. Prints made from 16 bit
files vs. prints made from 8 bit files from the same image. Let's see
if anyone can consistently tell the difference.