Hi Roger

I happened to see this post and feel there is a bit confusion about bits and what is going on in computers and image handling in the answers.

I think You is talking about the bits in the LUT table (Look Up Table) in the computer screen. In that case 10 bit is quite good. My excellent Eizo ColorEdge CX270 that can display 99% of Adobe RGB has a 10-bit LUT. They are professional photographic monitors costing about 2000$ each. The LUT choses from 16 bits color information from the graphic card and select appropriate colors for the chosen settings, in the screen that is. I am not aware of a monitor with bigger LUT. Even a reference monitor costing 20 000 $ has 10-bit LUT.

There is a lot of bits and bytes in image handling.

To start we have the cameras, that usually have 14 to 16 bits per pixel. If it is a color camera there is 14 to 16 bits per pixel for each red, Green and Blue primary colors. My old Nikon D800 had 14-bit but the software in the camera changed that to 12-bit per RGB if I saved raw format. Saving jpeg is only 8-bit. Usually, the astronomical CCD or CMOS cameras export images in 16 bits per pixel regardless of the internal resolution.

The software can choose to change the bits in the image when importing it. I think PixInsight uses 32-bit floating-point precision during the computing. That is reasonable because there is an increasing risk for rounding errors when using 16-bit integer math. There is a lot of complexity in image handling with different kind of noise, but that is another and longer story.

When saving the pictures after integration of the subs you take, it is good practice to save a 32- or 64-bit image before stretching and final image handling.

Finally, when you want do show your wonderful pictures on a website it is probably best to export a 8-bit jpeg (in sRGB) because it is likely to look best on all the screens out in the world.

Your computers 64-bit memory channels can handle all the formats you ask it to handle, depending on the software. The 10-bit screen LUT does not interfere in any way to what the internal work in the computer does.

Good luck!
Niklas Storck