Feature request: CMYK 16-Bit

[WalterBeiter]

16-Bit would be so much better for printing. especially with gradients as a background. CMYK 16-Bit please. 

 

Thanks. 

[Andy Somerfield]

Hi Walter,

 

We considered this in the beginning, but it turns out that no presses actually support it!

 

Thanks,

 

Andy,

[Hokusai]

Andy,

 

I was thinking the same thing when I read this. I have worked for several medium to large commercial printers in the prepress department over the years and whenever we received 16 bit files, we always converted them to 8 bit. In fact we had to, none of our R.I.P.'s nor any of our direct to plate, direct to press systems would take them. I no longer work for a commercial printer so I wasn't sure if this had changed but apparently not. Maybe Walter has some specific purpose for 16 bit files? There must be some sort of application for them but I don't know what it is? 

 

Hokusai

[WalterBeiter]

ok, thanks. I wasn't sure about that. When I send a pdf out to the press, they never said, that it needed to be 8 bit, so I thought I could send 16-bit. 

 

Never mind about the 16-bit then. I didn't know, that it wasn't supported by presses. Thanks.

[alexistrn]

@Andy Somerfield Hi everyone ! After almost 10 years, I am reviving this topic, because what was fit so many years ago is no longer necessarily valid today. I live in France and use Afinity for my business, and here, some printers offer to send files in 16 bits. Would it be possible to consider support for CMJN (that's the name in France) CMYK/16 bits ? It would be useful, especially for large/huge format printing and photography. Or maybe there's already a way to use it in the Affinity suite ? Because I don't see any way, whatever the app. Thank you for your answers !

Edited April 18 by alexistrn

[Oufti]

On 4/19/2024 at 12:40 AM, alexistrn said:

[…] what was fit so many years ago is no longer necessarily valid today. I live in France and use Afinity for my business, and here, some printers offer to send files in 16 bits.

I'm wondering what the benefit could be to have as many as 65 536  levels of grey for each color in CMYK? 

If it's in CMYK, I assume it's to be printed. So let's take a best case scenario:

Using a top level CMYK printer, able to print 3600 dots per inch, with a good screen ruling of 150 lpi you'll have only 577 levels of grey (instead of 65536), or at best 901 levels if you downgrade the screen ruling to a poor 120 lpi, or to be complete a mere 325 levels of color for an excellent 200 lpi. (Results are similar for FM screening.)
That is not so far from the 257 levels @150 lpi you can have with 8 bits images, using a more common 2400 dpi printer… 

Is it really the only benefit expected from such a spill of resources?

And aside this, when thinking that human eye is probably able to see only about 100 nuances of grey, even if you take note that it's not on a linear scale 256 levels of grey should be quite enough, no? 

[alexistrn]

On 4/20/2024 at 11:00 PM, Oufti said:

I'm wondering what the benefit could be to have as many as 65 536  levels of grey for each color in CMYK? 

If it's in CMYK, I assume it's to be printed. So let's take a best case scenario:

Using a top level CMYK printer, able to print 3600 dots per inch, with a good screen ruling of 150 lpi you'll have only 577 levels of grey (instead of 65536), or at best 901 levels if you downgrade the screen ruling to a poor 120 lpi, or to be complete a mere 325 levels of color for an excellent 200 lpi. (Results are similar for FM screening.)
That is not so far from the 257 levels @150 lpi you can have with 8 bits images, using a more common 2400 dpi printer… 

Is it really the only benefit expected from such a spill of resources?

And aside this, when thinking that human eye is probably able to see only about 100 nuances of grey, even if you take note that it's not on a linear scale 256 levels of grey should be quite enough, no? 

I actually tend to agree with what you just said. However, the interest of a 16-bit could be revealed for those who (like me), frequently use large gradients and potentially quite saturated colors. This is a question that I am asked, having sometimes been confronted with impressions that are necessarily excellent on this point.