Any Forum Member with Experience "Qimage One" for Mac

[The Hat]

Why do all the experts reckon that using a 16 bit driver gives them a much better photo !

Yes Mac do offer that option but yet it makes not a jot of difference whether you use the 8 or 16 bit driver, because the results are going to be the same, I know of no inkjet printer that will output using 16 bit.. So why all the kerfuffle about it..

 

[Tony4597]

I tend to both agree and disagree about 16 bit printing and what it may bring to the table.

Most experts I have had any contact with seem to be of the opinion that 16 bit brings nothing to the table and switching the option on is a waste of time as print comparison show zero difference, at least as far as photograpic image acquisition goes. It could be possible that some computer generated gradients would benefit but I have never tried as I do not work within a 16 bit pipeline

I can only speak about Epson drivers which are 16 bit compatible, but would assume Canon drivers would be the same.

But the problem is (or at least used to be?) no Windows print drivers support 16 bit printing and therefore applications such as Photoshop and Lightroom cannot send 16 bit data to the print driver.

As you noted Mac OS natively supports a 16 bit pipeline and applications such as Photoshop and Lightroom have options to switch this on.

Mike Chaney the author of Qimage put out a challenge some years ago asking for examples from anyone to find any photographic image where 16 bit printing produced a better visual result than 8 bit, stating you will not find any! AFAIK no one took up the challenge. Further to that he stated that he had no plans to support 16 bit until Windows itself supports native 16 bit printing.

Again AFAIK Windows even Windows 11 does not offer 16 bit print pipeline.

But to throw in another fact Qimage has included a simulated16 bit/channel print pipeline from v22(?) onwards! Claiming even smoother prints from 16 bit photos. One day I may find an image and the time to try it out
in hope I might go

Has anybody tried this:
As 8 bit images normally have several bits of noise in them (dither) the effect is such that 16 bit or 8 bit printers make no visible difference. But the 16 bit printer path can be demonstrate by printing a gradient over a tiny RGB range, say from RGB 127,127,127 to 135,135,135 made in a 16 bit Photoshop file

 

[thebestcpu]

Why do all the experts reckon that using a 16 bit driver gives them a much better photo !

Yes Mac do offer that option but yet it makes not a jot of difference whether you use the 8 or 16 bit driver, because the results are going to be the same, I know of no inkjet printer that will output using 16 bit.. So why all the kerfuffle about it..

That's a good question and I have some information to share yet it is only on a Mac system printing to an Epson P900 printer using the Epson Printer Driver (not the Apple version).

I printed a detailed 16-bit computer-generated 3D image via ray tracing with all sorts of reflections and partial transparencies. I printed with both the "Send 16-Bit Data" on in one print and turned off in another print.

I looked hard and could not see any differences at all.

So, I did a more straightforward experiment to understand better what that option does. First, for my system and printer, it was clear that the "Send 16-Bit Data," when turned off, is not truncating the 16-bit data down to 8-bit.

I did a controlled experiment to determine this fact.
First, I made sure that the built-in dithering was turned off both in Photoshop's gradient tool and also in the settings for Edit > Color Settings by unchecking the options "Use Dither (8-bit/channel images). This later option, if turned on, does 1-bit dither when converting from 16 bit to 8 bit, so I wanted that shut off (this is not well documented by Adobe).

I printed four images shown below. The first two images were the 16-bit gradient image, both with "Send 16-bit Data" on and then off.

The following two images were done from the same image except converted to 8-bit. The last two images were the 16-bit gradient image, both with "Send 16-bit Data" on and then off with the 8-bit version of the image.

The first two images using the 16-bit image showed no banding whether the "Send 16-bit Data" was on or off. No difference whatsoever.

The last two converted to 8-bit images showed the same banding, whether the "Send 16-bit Data" was on or off.

In conclusion, the 16-bit image data is not truncated to 8-bit at the front end of the printer driver, or one would have seen the banding.

Now, it is possible that somewhere in the printer driver pipeline, it is doing something in 8 bit vs 16 bit. It's just at a point where no impact is shown on my system, printer, and particular experiment. It's just not truncating the data at the front end going into the printer driver.

16-bit image and Send 16-bit Data turned on:

16-bit image and Send 16-bit Data turned off

8-bit image and Send 16-bit Data turned on:

8-bit image and Send 16-bit Data turned off

So, a 16-bit workflow can make a difference in the quality of some printed images, e.g., banding, yet I have not seen an example yet in my workflow where the setting of the checkbox "Send 16-bit Data" makes a difference in the print. So yes, 16-bit data makes a difference in the print, and if there are printer drivers that truncate the 16-bit image data to 8 bits on the front end, they have the potential to degrade the quality of the print.

John Wheeler

 

[The Hat]

That's a good question and I have some information to share yet it is only on a Mac sys

So, a 16-bit workflow can make a difference in the quality of some printed images, e.g., banding, yet I have not seen an example yet in my workflow where the setting of the checkbox "Send 16-bit Data" makes a difference in the print.

No inkjet printer can print in 16 bit, so where does that leave you..

The most likely cause is the photo Apps have altered the images that you send to the printer..

The same scenario applies to text, which is better 300 or 600 DPI.. !