Start Your Own Photography Business

Copyright (c) 2008 Tom Jackson

The wonders of modern technology never cease to amaze me. Growing up with a traditional camera and film and understanding the complexities of color film and the magic of color film processing, was indeed a fascinating period. Apple's Aperture 2 and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 supports 16-bit print drivers for Epson and Canon printers, allowing you to produce high-quality output with smoother gradients and better color fidelity...no darkroom needed.

However, you do need to ensure that you have a consistent 16 bit workflow from the image capture, through to image editing, and finally to the print output. This means that you need to capture your images in the RAW format. It is only with the RAW format that the image will have the required image data to make a difference on the printed output.

Of course, when making a decision to purchase a digital camera, you need to look at the number of pixels the sensor will capture. Most low end digital cameras, the consumer models, will not take RAW images, so those cameras cannot even be considered. You need either a very high end prosumer model or preferably, a DSLR. 6 Mega pixels is the very minimum number, but you need to be considering more.

Currently, only the Macintosh operating system supports 16 bit printing. This may change in the future, but for now it is Mac only. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 and Apple's Aperture 2 are the premier software packages for producing 16 bit prints. Remember, 8 bit images will not have sufficient image data to produce an effective 16 bit print from the ink jet printer. What does that mean?

The mathematical formula for working out the possible number of colors in an image is as follows; 8 bit images capture a maximum number of brightness values for each of the three primary colors, Red, Green and Blue of 256 different values. This means we have a possible 16.8 million colors.8 million. This equates roughly to what the human eye can perceive. However, if we look at 16 bit images, each pixel has a possible brightness value of 65,536 values. So, if we multiply 65,536*65,536*65,536 and get about 280 trillion colors, a little more than what the eye can perceive.

So, will all these extra colors really make a big difference on the final print. It is unlikely that in most situations, that you could really detect that difference, but in prints with lots of gradients, like sunsets with subtle red, blue, orange graduated skies, 16 bit could make a significant difference. 16 bit printing offers unique advantages, and where there is a large color gamut in the image 16 bit printing offers the advantage of better gradations.