Gimp + UFRaw

[Jonathan]

Once again, just as with the gradient, the 16-bit version survived without a scratch!

Say WHAT?  Are we looking at the same pics?  Both have suddenly acquired very nasty colour noise at the top.

I guess they are saying "if you really don't care about exposure and want to do everything in post then use 16 bits".  So 16 bits is the new raw

FWIW I work in 16 bits for most stuff but then I have (1) a very fast computer (2) lots of storage and (3) do a lot of work involving skin tones that might just need printing big.  For most of my stuff the difference is marginal at best but it's one of those 6th sigma things - a bit better is better.

[Hinfrance]

FWIW I do almost everything in 8 bit and sRGB because when there are no major tweaks involved it's better than good enough.

I think I can see a difference between the same conversion applied to an image to make it mono in 16 bit as opposed to 8 bit, so allow me my illusions  .

The blue sky thing is definite though. 

Most cameras produce, I believe, 12 or 14 bit RAW files. so that's 4096 to 16384 shades of any one colour. Although I bet Jonathan's state of the art stuff does the full 65536 trick. 

Now who wants to start on colour spaces?