# Does LR 6 perpetual license support 10-bit color?



## PhilBurton (May 7, 2016)

If so, which nVidia Quadro or AMD FirePro cards are recommended for a PC?  How much VRAM minimum?
Any other specs?

Besides, LR, I use Photoshop on my system.  I am not a professional so I can't go crazy on the cost.

Phil


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## clee01l (May 7, 2016)

PhilBurton said:


> If so, which nVidia Quadro or AMD FirePro cards are recommended for a PC?  How much VRAM minimum?
> Any other specs?
> 
> Besides, LR, I use Photoshop on my system.  I am not a professional so I can't go crazy on the cost.
> ...


I'm not understanding what you mean by 10-bit color.   There is 8 bit color (JPEGS) and 16 Bit Color (TIFFS and other high quality file formats. RAW files ofter do not record the full 16 bits but instead produce 12-14 bit color per channel.  The 8 bit and 16 bit is per color channel.  So, an RGB image will have 16 bit times 3 channels or 48bits per pixel Or 8 bits times 3 for 24 bit color.  Graphics cards might be capable of displaying 48 bits per pixel but more likely this will be a smaller number like 30 bit color.  Perhaps this is the 10 bit color that you are referring to.  This has been available on PCs since about 2006 and Adobe has supported it for PCs in Photoshop and perhaps LR as well. Only more recently has Apple made this available for OS X  and Adobe has updated the OS X version of PSCC to support 30 bit color now too. 

As for graphics cards, the only issue is GPU acceleration.  This has no relation to how pixels are displayed.  GPU is used for an addition CPU processor and not all Graphics cards are compatible with GPU acceleration. Here is a link to explain that  Adobe Lightroom GPU Troubleshooting and FAQ


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## PhilBurton (May 8, 2016)

clee01l said:


> I'm not understanding what you mean by 10-bit color.   There is 8 bit color (JPEGS) and 16 Bit Color (TIFFS and other high quality file formats. RAW files ofter do not record the full 16 bits but instead produce 12-14 bit color per channel.  The 8 bit and 16 bit is per color channel.  So, an RGB image will have 16 bit times 3 channels or 48bits per pixel Or 8 bits times 3 for 24 bit color.  Graphics cards might be capable of displaying 48 bits per pixel but more likely this will be a smaller number like 30 bit color.  Perhaps this is the 10 bit color that you are referring to.  This has been available on PCs since about 2006 and Adobe has supported it for PCs in Photoshop and perhaps LR as well. Only more recently has Apple made this available for OS X  and Adobe has updated the OS X version of PSCC to support 30 bit color now too.
> 
> As for graphics cards, the only issue is GPU acceleration.  This has no relation to how pixels are displayed.  GPU is used for an addition CPU processor and not all Graphics cards are compatible with GPU acceleration. Here is a link to explain that  Adobe Lightroom GPU Troubleshooting and FAQ



Cletus,

Let's agree that we are talking about RAW and TIFF source images that are 14- or 16-bit deep.  Internally, the hardware and/or software may be capable of processing or displaying or printing only at 8-bit resolution or maybe at 10-bit resolution. To display, edit, and ultimately print 10-bit color images, every element in the hardware/software chain has to support 10-bit color. My understanding is that Photoshop got 10-bit capability only recently, with CS 6.

From what I have read, most displays and most PC graphics cards today support only 8-bit color, and some really only 6-bit colort. OS X was only 8-bit color until a recent release.  I plan to buy a new graphics card and a new display for my PC, so this is a good time for me to look into this question, since 10-bit color devices will undoubtedly be more expensive.

Phil


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## clee01l (May 8, 2016)

So, we are talking about display color.  This has nothing to do with processing images but everything to do with what you see on the screen.   After some research, I'll retract what I said about LR.  Photoshop does have this capability and normally it is turned off.  If you have a monitor and graphic card capable of expressing 30 bit color, you can turn this feature on in PS.  by opening Preferences > Performance






There is no similar option in LR so I can presume that LR does not have this display capability.
If you have a graphics card and  monitor capable of displaying 30 bit color, It can use apps that can render 30 bit color.  This does not mean that the RGB data is not 16X3 or 48 bit.  You can still process at 16 bit and unless you start with an 8 bit JPEG you will still benefit from the extra color depth even though you can not display all of the color that is contained in the image data. 
 So what apps besides Photoshop can display the higher color depth?  I think you will find few that can take advantage of the added monitor color depth. 

FWIW, CS6 was released 4 years ago. hardly recent in computer years.  Apple only became 10 bit capable with the release of ElCapitan and AFAIK, only the 5K iMac can render at 30 bit.


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## PhilBurton (May 8, 2016)

clee01l said:


> So, we are talking about display color.  ...
> 
> There is no similar option in LR so I can presume that LR does not have this display capability.



Thank you for clearing things up for me.  That tells me not to pay the "premium" for a graphics card or a monitor that can handle 10-bit color, much as I would like to.  I do some amount of work in PS, but less than I thought I would, because LR is so complete.

For what it's worth, I could not find any discussion of this topic in Victoria's excellent and comprehensive FAQ book about LR 6.

Phil


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## Hal P Anderson (May 8, 2016)

There's a thread about this at the feature request forum:
Lightroom: Add 10-bit/channel color display support | Photoshop Family Customer Community

You can add your vote and comments there.


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## tspear (May 8, 2016)

PhilBurton said:


> Thank you for clearing things up for me.  That tells me not to pay the "premium" for a graphics card or a monitor that can handle 10-bit color, much as I would like to.  I do some amount of work in PS, but less than I thought I would, because LR is so complete.
> 
> For what it's worth, I could not find any discussion of this topic in Victoria's excellent and comprehensive FAQ book about LR 6.
> 
> Phil



Phil,

I see Cletus answer for Mac. But did anyone look to see what is the answer for Windows?

Tim


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## Hal P Anderson (May 8, 2016)

It isn't hard to find. How to enable 30-bit color on Windows platforms


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