1996.12.05 17:57 "Re: (more than 8 bits) TIFF images", by Daniel McCoy

The BitsPerSample required values for Grayscale and Palette-color Images are 4 and 8 according to the TIFF 6.0 Specification. Does it mean that TIFF does not support BitsPerSample values > 8 bits for these images?

If not, do you know any viewing tool which is able to display 12 bits-TIFF images?

I use 16-bit TIFF images and have submitted changes to the shareware xv viewer to display both 16-bit RGB and grayscale images. I believe the changes are incorporated into the current release of xv. xv truncates the low 8 bits of the image at load time and treats it as an 8-bit image from there on. A better deep image viewer would preserve the low bits and apply any modifications, such as gamma correction, to the deep image before truncating for display. I believe there are some commercially available deep image viewers.

In general, I think you will have a better chance of support for 16-bit images than 12-bit.

Daniel McCoy      Pixar      mccoy@pixar.com