Today most monitors can display 24-bit color. And with 24-bit color you can display 16,777,216 colors. That is a pretty impressive number and so you might wonder why would you need more? I'll show you that there are situations where 30-bit color can make a huge difference.

Cheap monitors
Many today's LCDs aren't suitable not even for photography viewing, because they have panels with 6 bits per RGB color only (giving 18 bits in total). On such monitors you will see a serious banding even on ordinary 8-bit (24-bit) images. I have prepared two images for you, the first one is with 8-bit gray gradient and the second one with 6-bit gray gradient. You should be seeing a serious banding on the second image. If both images look similar then you have a cheap 6-bit panel and if you're into photography, get rid of it.

(download)

Click here to download:

30-bit_display_support_in_Zone.zip (2 KB)

Wide gamut monitors
In last years many wide gamut LCDs have been introduced. At the first glance this might look as an improvement with no drawbacks. But it has one - the wider the gamut, the less bits for ordinary sRGB images. Therefore you might experience a slightly more banding then with your old 24-bit sRGB monitor. And this is one of the reasons when 30-bit displays make sense - when you have a device capable of displaying a wider color gamut.

Grayscale images
Many photographers prefer black and white photography over color. But when you start working with grayscale images you might be surprised by more severe banding than with color images. Why is that? Because all RGB channels contain same data, suddenly 24-bit color happens to be 8-bit color, giving you 256 levels only! With 30-bit capable hardware and software you'll be able to see such images with 10-bit resolution, giving you 1024 levels.

What do I need?

• Zoner Photo Studio 12 Professional (make sure that you have Build 9 or higher)
• 30-bit capable graphic card with OpenGL drivers (NVIDIA Quadro FX or ATI FirePro)
• 30-bit capable display (NEC or EIZO LCD, search for 10-bit or 30-bit color support)
• 16/48-bit image (RAW images can be used as a source of such data)

How do I turn it on?

If you have a 30-bit capable hardware, you'll have a checkbox enabled on the Advanced page in Zoner Photo Studio's Preferences dialog. Tick it on.

• 30-bit display support is available in the Editor only (RAW module will support this in ZPS13)
• In Windows Vista and Windows 7 this feature turns off Aero
• When other window appears over the 30-bit window, image will be drawn in 24-bit depth
• Tested on NVIDIA cards only, please let me know if you have ATI based 30-bit capable configuration

One of the most important and challenging tasks in digital photography is image sharpening. Although many methods like Unsharp mask provide good results and became a standard, we're still searching for a better sharpening method. Zoner Photo Studio 12 introduces a new method for image sharpening which is featured as a Soft Contours effect.

The difference among the newly introduced method and other conventional methods is that you can control sharpness of details of a different size independently and that you can not only enhance them, but also suppress them. This is especially important and powerful when sharpening portraits, because you can sharpen the most important smallest details of eyes or eyebrows and hide skin blemishes and soften the look of the portrait at once. Let's see an example...

(download)

Click here to download:

Soft_Contours_effect.zip (425 KB)

The effect is controlled by four sliders, where every slider controls a presence of details of a specific size. When value is equal to one then there's no change. When you push slider to higher values then you'll emphasize the desired details, when you push it to the left, you'll suppress or completely remove them. Another three images in the gallery above show which details are affected by which slider, going from the smallest details to bigger.

Of course this new method can be used in other situations too. I've prepared another example to demonstrate the effect...

Ordinary sharpening

2x Soft contours effect + contrast adjusted

Step One: Open image in editor and select Rectangular selection tool. Press Ctrl+A to select whole image. Press Ctrl+C afterwards to copy the image to clipboard.

Step Two: Paste the image using Ctrl+V shortcut. Select Overlay or Soft Light mode in toolbar. To alter the effect strength modify Layer opacity. If the result doesn't satisfy you, try other blend modes or the alternative step which is described below.

Step Two (alternative): This screenshot shows result of auto levels (Shift+L). Contrast has improved, but colors are a bit dull. However that doesn't mean that one method is better than another - every image has its own needs. Result of this method can be improved using Vignetting function (Ctrl+Shift+V) with automatic mask (strength 50%) and by applying levels afterwards.