Digital camera: question about noise

So far as I know, with some limitations, Photoshop copes with 16-bit mode.

Photoshop support for 16?bit images

Photoshop provides the following support for working with 16-bpc images:

Working in Grayscale, RGB Color, CMYK Color, Lab Color, and Multichannel, modes.

All tools in the toolbox, except the Art History Brush tool, can be used with 16?bpc images.

Color and tonal adjustment commands are available

You can work with layers, including adjustment layers, in 16?bpc images.

Many Photoshop filters can be used with 16?bpc images.

To take advantage of certain Photoshop features, such as some filters, you can convert a 16?bpc image to an 8?bpc image. It?s best if you do a Save As and convert a copy of the image file so the original file retains the full 16?bpc image data.

Photoshop does 2, 8, 16, 32 bits per colour as well as custom (it did most of them since ver 2.5 IIRC).

So you don't have to do any compression.

You really need to get windows and try some of the software before you pronounce on it.

well well..

Hmm. It certainly seems that 48bit (3x16) is coming to Gimp and is already available on Krita.. for linux. Well well well..

Every time you look up, something got better.

Krita? Ah! SO that's what Krita is...

Even a Windows installer available, albeit "highly experimental".

I feel an experiment coming on.

I don't think that you RC re 32-bpc - at least with sensible functionality. I'd suggest maybe CS3 is when it really became usable.

bpc = bits per channel

Not true. Unless you have some very old software! Almost all of the modern Photoeditors can cope directly with 16bit per channel colour or

I can't work out if Elements does or not but PaintShopPro certainly does and it will accept Photoshop addins (has done for a long time).

PNG or better J2k give the smallest file for greatest fidelity.

Now all that's needed is an affordable display that can show the results accurately.

And a pair of eyes that can see the differences... :-)

(Not saying that you cannot see the difference between 8 and 16 bpc in at least some images. But to really be able to see the difference in most images? Not sure.)

The Mark One Human eyeball is very good at accurately telling the difference between shades which indicate ripeness of fruit and rottennes of some food, so if these are involved, then 16 bit colour channels may well be wanted. It's also good at spotting animals hiding in vegetation, both by seeing minute amounts of movement and colours that are slightly "off".

A`lot of them would not only have trouble discriminating most adjacent shades at 16 bit, but at 8 bit, as well. As for describing the colours.....

That's why I got mine upgraded to Mark Two-point-five. :-)

Any of the high end IPS screens are adequate for the task at least when compared to the rather poor dynamic range of printed images. I have an HP LP2475w which is pretty wide gamut for imaging (although I did worry about some of the reviews that said it was painful to use for typing).

It turns out that the default settings out of the box are blow a hole through the back of your head bright for shop window display. Once adjusted it does a very good job of representing 8 bit images.

There are now a few 2Mpixel displays at affordable prices but most cameras will take >12Mpixel images by default. My Canon Ixus was 2Mp.

Generally you are keeping the extra bits to be able to rescue the shadow detail and not burn out the highlights on tricky images.

A fair proportion of the population are slightly colour blind too and there isn't a lot the monitor can do about that!

Its not so much colour blind as everyone's perception of colour is different. The eye doesn't really see colour at all, the brain "sees" colour. E.g. here is no such thing as brown light for the eye to see brown. You can even change what people see as the colour of an abject by just changing its environment while keeping its light emissions constant.

The D200 doesn't really have an idiot (aka Full auto mode), it is a learning curve as you say. Great camera though, especially at current secondhand prices, and availability of old lenses with focus ring. Ye can apparently (google says) install a split image prism focusing screen. Hmmm, toys...

I found this a good read on the camera focusing options.

The gamut for printing is indeed much less than the gamut for most displays. My point, though, was that I've seen no display devices that claim a 16 bit per channel dynamic range, as is claimed by some scanners. In fact, the best I've seen has claimed 8 bits.

I record sound, and I use 24 bit recording and playback, and 32 bits for editing. As what I produce is normally played back at i6 bits, I use the

Not a problem, I can zoom in to pixel level using any editing program.

Or to make layering of different images more accurate.

True. Which is why I said that a lot of people can't even resolve 8 bit per channel images.

I'm fairly sure, not. The processing just discards pixel information, as it's reading the sensor, it doesn't change the sensor properties in any way that I know of. So the noise will still be there (most of that will be a side-effect of amplification) as the pixel size hasn't magically increased.

ps. rec.photo.digital is still very active - couple of assholes in it, but very useful mostly.

Doesn't stand for anything. "raw" will do.

You should vary your diet more.