RAW Editing in Photoshop: 16-Bit vs. 8-Bit Mode

There are many advantages to working with RAW images, but what’s the advantage of editing them in 16-bit mode? Well, 8-bit images contain 256 brightness levels that add up to 16.8 million colors, but 16-bit images contain 4,096 brightness levels that add up to billions of colors. Therefore, editing RAW files in 16-bit mode with the plug-in greatly increases your color gamut. Working in 16-bit mode can also be useful if the corrections you expect to make will be extreme, because they can cause posterization in 8-bit images due to data loss. However, despite the advantages of working with a wider gamut and protecting yourself from potential data loss, keep in mind that 99 percent of the printing devices available are capable of outputting images at only 8 bits per channel. This makes the difference between 8-bit and 16-bit modes hardly noticeable when the image is printed.