Upgrading Linux monitor and graphics card for image editing....

[Don_Campbell]

What's your experience with 10-bit depth?

I have experience with 10bit/channel displays on Linux. The executive summary is the feature is less useful during image processing, but of considerable possible value for public exhibit.

My setup includes a suitably configured X11, Quadro K600, DP cable, and a capable display (Eizo). The apps I care about are GIMP and xloadimage.

On a lower-end card, the 10-bit mode has a considerable impact on screen drawing so I don't use it for general purposes (browsing, xterm, etc). You can switch between X11 screens, each running in different modes. Many images lack the gradual tone gradients where 8bit/channel can show badly. I therefore consider this display feature of secondary importance. Where you absolutely want deep pixels is within the image-processing app and, while it took years of waiting, we now have a fully capable GIMP to render subtle gradients to perfection.

Historically, nVidia enabled 10bit/channel on Quadro only. I don't know the current situation with the GeForce RTX 30 Series.

Thanks for the helpful detail.

I'm a retired biomedical research scientist, but by chance I was asked to help with tech support for an online self-publishing company. My only experience with "banding" is not with my own images but with customer images.

It was from that experience that I gained insight into the advantage of using image editing programs that use floating point arithmetic throughout the process until they export display formats using integers. That's one of the many advantages of RawTherapee.

If one starts with integer formats and then do a large number of successive calculations on the image with integer arithmetic there is potential for rounding errors that truncate the details that contribute to subtle gradients. The more processes the more potential. Some folks apparently would a process multiple times changing things again and again to improve the look they see instead of going back and doing that process one time in one step. I typically explained to those customers how fewer steps to achieve the same look would likely mean far less chance of rounding errors and banding. I'm not sure it "took" in their work process.

Don

 

[Don_Campbell]

My setup includes a suitably configured X11, Quadro K600, DP cable, and a capable display (Eizo). The apps I care about are GIMP and xloadimage.

I may be mistaken, but I believe every mention of 10bpc color on Linux in this thread has so far been Xorg. So the obvious question...what about Wayland?

I've looked for documentation about it without finding.

Don

 

[A J Fresnel]

Historically, nVidia enabled 10bit/channel on Quadro only. I don't know the current situation with the GeForce RTX 30 Series.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that was a limitation of their openGL driver, not the display. I don't thnk.RawTherapee uses OpenGL.