Develop TIFF's in 8 Bit or 16 Bit?

Juerg1

• January 05, 2011 13:17

Does it makes sense to develop TIFF files out of RAW files (Nikon NEF in this case) in 16 Bit when the Cam makes them in 12 Bit (or in 14 Bit as user can select in a Nikon D3s) ?

further workflow: Photoshop CS5 adjustments in 16 Bit; at the end converting back into 8 Bit, exporting TIFF and JPEG files.

thanks for suggestions!

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  Paul Steunebrink

  • January 05, 2011 16:30

  My short answer: yes, 16-bit output makes sense.
  
  Longer: Although you can not compare the number of bits of the raw file to that of the RGB output file in a 1-to-1 manner because a lot of mathematics is involved in the conversion, 12- or 14-bit is still more than 8. With 16-bit RGB images, digital headroom for editing is considerably larger compared to 8-bits. So regarding bit depth, you workflow makes sense to me. If you feel comfortable with it, I suggest you'll continue your workflow for best results.

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  NN889362

  • January 05, 2011 20:11

  It doesn't make sense right now as you are constrained by your output devices. No printer or monitor can show you the difference between 8 and 16 bit. The files are also tremendously huge. It's a waste of space.

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  Jeffrey Kott

  • January 07, 2011 00:05

  It depends.
  
  If you're going to do a lot of color correction work on the TIFF in Photoshop after you convert in C1, you should use 16 bit.
  
  If all you're going to do is sharpen and resize the image in Photoshop, 8 bit should be fine assuming that you're using a reasonably small color space, such as AdobeRGB.
  
  If you're using a very large color space, such as ProPhoto RGB, you should always be working with 16 bit files.

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