John_Mansfield@emal.sprl.umich.edu (John F. Mansfield) (12/11/90)
OK, I want to share my experiences with the rest of the community and find out if anyone else has made any headway in trying to convince Mac monitor makers that there is life after 8-bit images. Ah, I hear you say, what about 24-bit? Well, what I am talking about is displaying images at 16-bits of grey per pixel. Now this is really overkill as the human eye is only sensitive to about 10 bits (1024 levels). In fact I dont really want to display 16 bits but really have access to 16bit data that I can compress/expand/process to display all of the features in a signal with a very dynamic range. I am talking about electron diffraction patterns and images recorded in the electron microscope, x-ray diffraction patterns and also biological and medical imaging. George Baxter of CMU posted recently asking for info on 16bit PICTS for bio-imaging applications. There is a use for such images. What is the point of my post? Well in trying to find how the development of higher gray level systems I approached the major monitor and video card manufacturers (RasterOps, Radius, SuperMac and Truevision) This is a quick precis of their responses: RasterOps: 8-bit grey is photographic quality. (wouldnt event discuss it, treated me as if I were a moron for even suggesting 12bit) SuperMac: 8-bit has been defined as photographic qualtity and we dont intend to go further with grey levels. Radius: Never got to speak with a real person, all I got was voice mail and answering machines. I refuse to try asking a technical question of an answering machine. Truevision: Talked to a very helpful guy who said he'd check up and get back . to me. When he did he said they did have a card capable of displaying 16bits per pixel but they didnt seem to have software to support it. Promised to call me again with the name of a small esoteric company that did 12bit grey for the IBM PC (marvellous!), but I havent heard from them yet. So no luck, are these guys doing any development and dont want to talk about it or are they just not interested? Scientific imaging and medical imaging frequently doesnt need 24 bits of color and would be better suited if 12 bit or better grey was available. So are we going to be left out in the cold while the industry moves ahead with DeskTop Publishing/ Multimedia? I would have thought the scientific and medical imaging fields were major areas that could be exploited by these vendors. Would anyone from any of these companies or even Apple themselves care to comment? I await you responses with interest. John Mansfield University of Michigan North Campus Electron Microbeam Analysis Laboratory 2455 Hayward, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-2143. 313-936-3352 Internet: jfmjfmjfm@ruddles.sprl.umich.edu or john_mansfield.um.cc.umich.edu better still John_Mansfield@emal.sprl.umich.edu Since this article could be misconstrued as a flame I better say that these are my opinions and not those of the U of M (naturally).