[kami]

Hello everyone

I was wondering in which bit depth most of you are usually working with in photoshop?
I mostly work in 8bit, because I tend to do a lot of postprocessing (especially landscape, people, moods) and its way easier to do in 8 bit.
For complex lighting situations I use 16bit, mostly for interior scenes but the photoshop file takes ages to save then ...
I almost never use the 32bit because most photoshop tools and layers don't work.

How about you? What are your experiences?
Is it worth working in higher depth?

Cheers
Kami

[Sebastien Bernard]

+1 here I tend to work on 16 bits...

[dmeyer]

We generally render to 32 in case we need the latitude later, with drive space being so cheap.

Then knock it down if we have to.

[Polyxo]

I recently saw an interesting Photoshop trick mentioned which I have to try out myself.
Say you have certain layers which you rather would like to keep 16bitish or higher but for the
rest you would like to work on 8 bit. Then you can select all these precious layers together
and turn them into a single smart object. Afterwards you can convert the document to
8 bit but the smart object keeps its higher bitdepth - internally.
That might be a way to use the best of the two worlds.

Just as an aside: Photoline allows you to use all its tools in 16 bit and even 32 bit.
Nothing in the menus is ever greyed out! The program doesn't pester you with Smart Objects, Smart Filters,
separate workspaces for Raw-Editing and such.
It is clearly among the ugliest programs I ever looked at (tough, really), but conceptually it's it pretty elegant.
And dirt cheap. Maybe worth a look - apparently even the Maxwell for Photoshop Plugin works.

Holger

[choo-chee]

I use 8bit.
After all, clients eyes never see any difference as long the work is done right.
And the save is faster.

[numerobis]

16 bit here

The smart object workflow sounds interesting... referencing 32 bit files would be nice.

[Polyxo]

referencing 32 bit files would be nice.

You might try canlinkit - one can even bring 32 bit images into 8bit images (as smart objects
using the above mentioned method). I find this extension very useful for many applications.

[kami]

the referencing method with 32 bits sounds really good. I might give that workflow a try. The only downside is, that you have to use the alpha mask (because the linear dodge+multiply background does not work if used inside a smart object).
I just started to use smart objects more often, they are pretty handy - especially if you need to rerender and replace the rendering and want to add for example some sharpening to the render itself.

[jc4d]

...Just as an aside: Photoline allows you to use all its tools in 16 bit and even 32 bit.
Nothing in the menus is ever greyed out! The program doesn't pester you with Smart Objects, Smart Filters,
separate workspaces for Raw-Editing and such.
It is clearly among the ugliest programs I ever looked at (tough, really), but conceptually it's it pretty elegant.
And dirt cheap. Maybe worth a look - apparently even the Maxwell for Photoshop Plugin works.

Holger

I threw away photoshop long time ago since I discovered PhotoLine and I agree that the UI is not the most appealing one but is very powerful software.
I confirm that the Maxwell photoshop plugin works without a glitch there, I use it all the time.

Cheers
JC

[simmsimaging]

The smart object way works great. I use this all the time. I work in 8bit most of the time but major changes can be done in 32bit anytime you want to.

Regarding the masking thing: I recommend masking inside the smart object. That makes other changes non destructive as well.

Linear dodge layers and things like that work differently in the two colour modes so some times you can layer in 8 bit but some layering may need to be done within the smart object instead.

[Polyxo]

I threw away photoshop long time ago since I discovered PhotoLine and I agree that the UI is not the most appealing one but is very powerful software.
JC

JC, are you by chance this guy? I liked that Blog-Post.
There are probably not too many finish Photoline users, hence I'm asking...
I personally am still far too used to Photoshop to do the switch but PL is cool, no question.