JPG 12-bit color depth

[terka]

Accorging to

http://www.photoscala.de/2014/01/20/jpeglibjpeg-v9-1/

jpeg now can hold deeper bit depth than before

If i have raw images can i convert them to jpg to keep that dept (understand that the output files will be bigger than standard jpg)
Thank you a lot!

[jazzman]

Beside the most common 24bit depth ( 8 bit per colour channel) there are also JPEGs with 48bit depth (16 bit per channel). Others, if they exist at all, are very rare. Usually with dedicated RAW processing software you can export images to 24bit or 48bit depth. - Irfanview can read 48bit images, but will convert them to 24bit on loading and displaying. Editing in IrfanView will therefore not benefit from the greater colour depth: the result will always be a 24bit image.

[Jacal]

I might be clumsy, but I wasn't able to find a single 12-bit jpeg sample (even less 16-bit, that, as far as I know, isn't supported in any experimental version/fork).

[terka]

Is it possible to add this feature to Irfanview?
Some viewers are having this feature, eg.

http://download.cnet.com/NewView-Graphics-File-Viewer/3000-2192_4-10043776.html

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

All things are possible, but you won't get much support for adding support for obscure image formats to IrfanView. Only this week, Irfan Skiljan replied to a request to improve the much more commonly used DICOM medical image format saying that he was using a three-year old plugin for which there were no updates. There is no mileage in providing support for every image format unless it is widely used, and unless plugins or libraries come without license terms that require payment to third-parties.

The program's single developer cannot possibly write the code to support these obscure formats, he has to rely on plugins or freely available libraries. Even then, he needs to write some code to implement support. Why bother if we cannot even find a single example of this image format in use?

Years ago, BPG format support was requested, and a plugin is available, but due to licensing issues, it has still not been implemented.

If you need this format, and know of an image viewer that supports it, then use that image viewer.

[Jacal]

The mentioned NewView viewer - available on it's home page - can actually convert images to 12-bit lossy and lossless jpeg (metadata are lost in the process).

None of about 10 viewers/editors I have tried, can open such a file. So yes, it is an obscure format, at least for now. Programs that don't support it:

irfanview
zoner 17
imageJ
wildbit
faststone
xnview
gimp 2.9
lightzone
rawtherapee
darktable 2.0
honeyview