I'm preparing some Isis targets, the Colorport 1728 & Bill Atkinsons 1728 and noticed that Colorport saves its targets as 8bit files and Mr. Atkinsons are 16bit. I read through his FAQ and saw that he prefers 16bit printing since more drivers will support this in the future. The funny thing is I have had others make me profiles in the past using 8bit printed targets and claiming the profiles made were 16bit. Right now though I don't know if the profiles I currently use are 8 or 16bit, they are the Lexjet profiles for the epson 9880 series (I have emailed them so I should know soon), this has left me with a couple of questions, but first this is my intended workflow:
I do all editing in 16bit, AdobeRGB, and then flatten & convert to 8bit before resizing for final output (which are often quite large and sometimes difficult to either resize or edit in 16bit once enlarged). Currently my interest is to not print in 16bit, but I was told that a 16bit profile was the way to go (by Booksmartmedia) and that printing an 8bit file through a 16bit ICC profile posed no problem.
Questions:
1. To make a 16bit profile do you have to print a 16bit target? If so, can an 8bit colorport target be converted to 16bit without impacting the target in any negative way?
2. To compare the Atkinsons target with the Colorport can I down convert the Atkinson 16bit target to 8bit? I noticed that when I open the Atkinson target in Colorport I can reformat the target to other sizes and once saved it becomes 8bit... so this leads me to think, at least if the conversion happens in Colorport, that it is ok to do so.
3. Can 8bit images be printed through 16bit profiles with no negative impact?
Thanks,
-John