16Bit or 32Bit on saving Tif files

[Ewan]

Just a quickie question about file format.

After stacking in DSS is it best to save the stacked tif as 32Bit or 16Bit ?

The only difference i visually see in PS is 32Bit files don't show seperate RGB channels on the right pane where as 16Bit does, is this really important though ? stretching can be done in PI then final in PS i guess.

Thanks for looking.

[Photosbykev]

use 16bit Ewan, most processes in ps only work with 16bit or use FITS going into PI

[Ewan]

Thanks for quick reply.

[spectre]

I forget where I read this but, when saving as a 16 bit tif in DSS you are really getting an 8 bit image in 16 bit clothing. I always use the autosave and convert to 16 bit in PS and my images seem to be better, so maybe they were right.

[billhinge]

In the early days of digital and photoshop there was a whole internet debate if you google "dan margulis 8 bit 16 bit challenge" on whether there was any benefit in doing manipulation in 8 bit or 16 bit, Margulis the photoshop guru challenged anyone to prove 16bit editing was better than 8 bit

Personally I agree with most of Margulis work but I find that upscaling even 8 bit or 16 bit images to 32 bit or higher seems to my eyes to reduce artefacts if you are doing torture manipulation in pixinsight (I know it doesn't add detail but I can believe it reduces errors). So I tend to use 32 bit more than not (or even 64), maybe not as important in photoshop though

I think its one of those belief things

[Photosbykev]

The DSS autosave file is a 32-bit floating point image