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You've been able to handle "10 bit" files on Macintosh or Windows since forever. What's new here is native video card driver support for allowing 10 bits per ch

You've been able to handle "10 bit" files on Macintosh or Windows since forever. What's new here is native video card driver support for allowing 10 bits per channel (30 bpp) content to be viewed real time through the main display. Let's be very clear here — being able to view 30 bpp is a very, very marginal benefit for most people most of the time, even if they're working on high bit depth material. Far more important has been the substantial improvements in display gamut and accuracy. For content creators the important thing is for this additional bit depth to be captured in the first instance and preserved during manipulation.

MichaelGG 11y ago
Is it very marginal? Shouldn't it reduce banding by a factor of 4 or so? I notice banding a lot on all sorts of content.
- miahi 11y ago
  The banding is mostly caused by color compression rather than device support. 99.99% of the content one usually sees is compressed, and many times it's a second compression over something already compressed (I don't know any "uncompressed Youtube" or "raw Instagram").
- Matumio 11y ago
  It's possible to notice banding with 8bpc if you look at a color gradient, especially if it wasn't dithered. But if you add proper dithering (over all 3 channels) and you're looking at a natural image (yeah, not a 256-color web-optimized one)... I don't know. Dithering plus higher resolution has pretty much the same effect as a higher bit depth.
jacobolus 11y ago
You’re right that if you have small pixels (200+ DPI), and especially if your content doesn’t have too much dynamic range, you can use dithering to make your content look pretty smooth on an 8-bit display. A non-dithered 10-bit display should look better than an 8-bit dithered display though, and if you add dithering to the 10-bit display, you should be able to get a pretty darn nice view of 12 or 14-bit content. For instance, 10-bit displays should be great for looking at smooth gradients (e.g. defined with CSS) over a large area of the screen, for which 8-bit displays still often get fairly posterized. One thing about recent displays is that they’re very bright, and have impressively dark blacks (with a smooth glossy glass surface with some kind of anti-reflective coating on it). For instance, the Macworld UK review measured the 5K iMac with max brightness of 445 lux, with a 1160:1 contrast ratio. That’s really damn impressive, better than you’ll find in a movie theater. (It’s hard to tell exactly what their test methodology was though. I can’t tell if they measured in a typical room, or in complete darkness.) Such a high contrast ratio lets you start to look at images with more dynamic range than you could get in a typical photo print, or an order of magnitude more than you’d get in e.g. a magazine. But if you start looking at such images, you really start pushing up against the limits of an 8-bit display, and you are forced to choose what part of the brightness range you’ll posterize. A 10-bit display is very helpful for those types of images.
- jacobolus 11y ago
  Erm, whoops. I meant 445 nits.

MichaelGG 11y ago

Is it very marginal? Shouldn't it reduce banding by a factor of 4 or so? I notice banding a lot on all sorts of content.

miahi 11y ago
The banding is mostly caused by color compression rather than device support. 99.99% of the content one usually sees is compressed, and many times it's a second compression over something already compressed (I don't know any "uncompressed Youtube" or "raw Instagram").
Matumio 11y ago
It's possible to notice banding with 8bpc if you look at a color gradient, especially if it wasn't dithered. But if you add proper dithering (over all 3 channels) and you're looking at a natural image (yeah, not a 256-color web-optimized one)... I don't know. Dithering plus higher resolution has pretty much the same effect as a higher bit depth.

jacobolus 11y ago

You’re right that if you have small pixels (200+ DPI), and especially if your content doesn’t have too much dynamic range, you can use dithering to make your content look pretty smooth on an 8-bit display. A non-dithered 10-bit display should look better than an 8-bit dithered display though, and if you add dithering to the 10-bit display, you should be able to get a pretty darn nice view of 12 or 14-bit content. For instance, 10-bit displays should be great for looking at smooth gradients (e.g. defined with CSS) over a large area of the screen, for which 8-bit displays still often get fairly posterized. One thing about recent displays is that they’re very bright, and have impressively dark blacks (with a smooth glossy glass surface with some kind of anti-reflective coating on it). For instance, the Macworld UK review measured the 5K iMac with max brightness of 445 lux, with a 1160:1 contrast ratio. That’s really damn impressive, better than you’ll find in a movie theater. (It’s hard to tell exactly what their test methodology was though. I can’t tell if they measured in a typical room, or in complete darkness.) Such a high contrast ratio lets you start to look at images with more dynamic range than you could get in a typical photo print, or an order of magnitude more than you’d get in e.g. a magazine. But if you start looking at such images, you really start pushing up against the limits of an 8-bit display, and you are forced to choose what part of the brightness range you’ll posterize. A 10-bit display is very helpful for those types of images.

jacobolus 11y ago
Erm, whoops. I meant 445 nits.