4 replies to this topic

[gerdastro]

It seems a few users export their Pixinsight image as TIF for finishing steps in another program, e.g. Photoshop, before reimporting it to PI again.

Many other programs can not handle the normal 32bit TIF files PI is using, so it needs to be exported in 16bit.

 

I am wondering if you actually lose any significant data by doing so.

 

Most of the time I do not bother with Photoshop and finish everything in just PI, but sometimes there are small tweaks that I can just do better in PS. This is usually at the end of the editing flow, but not always the last step - I might still want to reimport the image to PI for some final adjustments.

If I was to learn that the image I get back in PI with reduced bit depth has actually lost some 'quality' that might compromise further editing in PI, it would seriously influence my decision whether or not to do any future 'excursions' into PS.

 

Does anyone know?

[sharkmelley]

If you are exporting linear data then definitely use 32bit otherwise there might be some data loss.  But if the image is already background subtracted and stretched then exporting as 16bit is absolutely fine.

[WadeH237]

It depends on what processing that you are doing in Photoshop.

 

If you are heavily stretching very faint details, then PixInsight's 32 bit, floating point math is better than 16 bit integer math, as it can represent far more discrete brightness levels.

 

If, as sharkmelley suggests, you are bringing a stretched image over for final touches, then it's fine.

[gerdastro]

Really appreciate the feedback! Yes, this is always in non-linear phase as last or second-last step of my editing, so then there should not be any concern.

[vidrazor]

Many other programs can not handle the normal 32bit TIF files PI is using, so it needs to be exported in 16bit.

I am wondering if you actually lose any significant data by doing so.

Does anyone know?

If you've opened your data to the point where you're just fine-tuning, the difference is negligible.

 

However if you'd like to stay in 32-bit, Affinity Photo can work in 32-bit, unlike Photoshop. Oddly enough, GIMP can also do this, although GIMP is unfortunately missing important tools like layer transforms, although they're promised in the never-coming version 3.