12-bit TIFFs?!?

Hi Group,

I don't know if I am in the right forum here, but I have no idea where else to ask.

I recently took some microscopic images of neurons (on a confocal microscope with a laser scanner)

I saved these images and transferred them to my laptop.

now sitting at home, I realized, that the software has saved the images in 12-bit mode. When I tried to open these images on my pc (even with adobe ps cs) it said that it could not open them because they were saved in 12-bit mode.

My question now is: does anyone know how to convert 12-bit TIFFs back to 8-bit

pleeeeaaaaase help! it is quite urgent - I have to analyze those bl* data

thanks, Simon