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Help please!editing 12bit files

Author	Post

Posted by andrew: Fri Nov 1st, 2013 11:41

1^st Post

Hi,

I shoot Raw on my nikon D200 which shoots 12bit files. In CS it opens as an 8bit file but allows me to change to a 16bit file. for some reason it doesn't offer to open the image in the cameras set 12bit option. Can anyone tell me then if it is always better to work in 16bit as opposed to 8 with CS or is it better really to use 12bit specific nikon software?

Posted by jk: Fri Nov 1st, 2013 11:52

2^nd Post

Hi Andrew, welcome to the forum.

When the file is in RAW mode it is 12bit capture, when you open it in Adobe Camera RAW it opens it as 12bit and on save it saves it as a 8bit JPG (this is all that is possible with current standard), or 8bit TIFF or 16bit TIFF.
If you want to do a lot of editing in Photoshop (PS) it is best to work with the TIFF and depending on your version of Photoshop it may be possible to use the 16bit tools but earlier versions of PS only had 8bit tools so you always had to convert to 8bit to use.

Hope this helps.

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Posted by Robert: Fri Nov 1st, 2013 17:43

3^rd Post

Welcome to the forum Andrew, I wouldn't get too hung up on formats, I save in camera D200 and D3100 as NEF (RAW) All my images are viewable in Lightroom, I do basic cropping, and adjustments in Lr and I take a screen shot for anything I want to upload to a forum in JPEG.

If I want to give an image special treatment I open it in Photoshop process it and save as 16bit TIFF full resolution and with layers. Storage is so cheap it isn't worth compromising quality for space.

What is your main use for the images? Printing, or viewing on your own computer or TV screen or uploading to the internet in some way...

There are some very good videos on the Adobe website explaining many of these technical aspects of photography related to PhotoShop, also there are some good ones on Lightroom which explain this sort of stuff very well.

____________________
Robert.

Posted by andrew: Tue Nov 5th, 2013 03:26

4^th Post

Thanks for your reply Robert. Much appreciated. It's for printing mainly. I do open my raw images as 16bit NEF files and work on them but then save as PDF. Is it better to save as a TIFF file then for the more important files I may want to send to my lab?

Posted by andrew: Tue Nov 5th, 2013 03:28

5^th Post

sorry i meant I save as PSD files. Well that is what automatically is selected when i click on save as.

Posted by jk: Tue Nov 5th, 2013 03:51

6^th Post

andrew wrote:
sorry i meant I save as PSD files. Well that is what automatically is selected when i click on save as. You can choose any file type you want PSD is just for use by other Adobe product. If you want a more open format then TIFF is better.
I guess that your lab will also prefer TIFF or JPG files.

____________________
Still learning after all these years!
https://nikondslr.uk/gallery_view.php?user=2&folderid=none

Posted by andrew: Tue Nov 5th, 2013 04:25

7^th Post

cheers

1st new

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