Today’s Question: Do color film photo prints have as many colors as modern digital photos? In other words, assuming no editing afterwards, is there an advantage to scanning with 16-bit color vs 8-bit? And can the same be said for scanning negatives?
Tim’s Quick Answer: Photo prints from film don’t contain as much color as modern digital images. If you have the original transparency (film or slide) I highly recommend scanning that, and I prefer to do so with 16-bit per channel color. For photo prints you can scan at 8-bit per channel unless you’re going to need to do significant editing work.
More Detail: Generally speaking, there isn’t a tremendous advantage to scanning an analog color image in 16-bit per channel mode unless you’ll need to do significant editing, but for slides or negatives I prefer to scan at 16-bit per channel just to help ensure optimal quality and fidelity. For scanning prints I recommend using 8-bit per channel mode unless significant editing is going to be required.
The original film contains significantly more information than the print, so I highly recommend scanning film if it is available, using prints for scanning only when the original film images aren’t available.
It is important to note, however, that for black and white images I always recommend scanning in 16-bit per channel mode, because there are only 256 shades of gray available for 8-bit monochrome images. As a result, it is very easy to see banding in an 8-bit black and white image because there aren’t enough shades of gray to support smooth gradations. This is a particular risk if you need to apply strong adjustments to a black and white image.
