Scan with little to no adjustments
Level correct, possible minor overall color correct
Convert to 8 bit
Create dodge/burn masks etc.
Sharpen
Output
So I could do most of my 16 bit work with a histogram. Of course I know others who do considerable color correction in that first step, especially people scanning film negatives (I use only positive transparencies so my scans are pretty close color balance wise) so they might not be fully satisfied but it's a start!
-RW
Sven Neumann wrote:
Hi,
RW Hawkins <rw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
True, 8 bit is OK for "animation" work (like Shrek) but for live action it just does not cut it. This is why film gimp supports 16 bit. Any house doing live action work is likely long switched over to 16 bit.
As a photographer my results are significantly better if I do scan and initial level adjustment using 16 bit and convert later to 8bit to use the better tools of the current GIMP.
(just a note of encouragement for those working on 16bit support, we
need it!)
we are aware of the need and will turn to it as soon as 1.4 is out of the door. Until then, here's an idea that would probably help: What if we improve the file plug-ins that read file types that support higher color depths (like TIFF) in such a way that they allow to do simple adjustments before the data is propagated down to 8bit? I was thinking of something like the levels tool. Do you think it would be possible to perform a reasonable first color adjustment only by looking at a histogram? In that case it should relatively easy to add that functionality to some of the file plug-ins. Since this wouldn't need any support from the GIMP core (albeit perhaps some helper functions in libgimp and libgimpwidgets) this could happen for GIMP-1.4. What do you think?
Salut, Sven
