48-bit image editing and WebP support

[SysOp]

Dear NeoSoft,

I have two feature requests for NeoPaint, I think a small one and a big one.
1. Support for the WebP format (developed by Google). This is a very efficiënt format.
2. Actual 48-bit image editing support, NeoPaint already supports opening RAW pictures but I think they are converted to 24-bit on the fly and half of the detail is lost. It would be awesome if NeoPaint could be used to make corrections to RAW photos so huge and expensive Adobe software would no longer be required.
This might be a lot of work so maybe in the meantime another possibe quick solution would be to add support for Adobe 8BI format plug-ins? So that the free Adobe Camera RAW plug-in can be used with NeoPaint.
Maybe the source code to DCRaw is useful: http://www.cybercom.net/~dcoffin/dcraw/.

Kind regards,
Jeroen

[Neosoft Support]

Those are good ideas. I'll make a note to look into the Webp format as it might be an interesting addition, assuming that there are no licensing restrictions.

Adding support for 48bit images would be more difficult. It's probably impossible for the human eye to tell the difference between 48bit and 24bit images, but there may be some types of color adjustments that would benefit. My experience with 48bit images is fairly limited, so you probably can elaborate on the benefits of 48bit processing better than I can.

[SysOp]

Thanks for your interest.

I'll try to elaborate the benefits of 48-bit image processing...

When taking pictures using 48 bit colour instead of 24, you can choose which 24 bits to use out of the 48. It's a bit comparable to using 8-bit palette colour.
For example, a photo can be very dark because you caught the sun or indoors a window when it is very bright outside. You can adjust the brightness afterwards without loss of detail when saved as a 24-bit image. Or use gamma correction instead to still be able to see the trees outside that otherwise become white when saved as 24-bit image. This of course also applies to correcting the white balance of pictures that are for example taken at a party that all look yellowish. These can be corrected and still satisfy the full potential of 24-bits colour depth.
Of course you will not be able to see all colours at the same time on the screen but you can see the result that will be saved to a 24-bit image.

It can also be compared to recording audio using 32 bits per sample instead of 16. You can't hear the difference when played back but you can record very soft (hope I'm using the correct word there) or distant sounds, normalise the recording to 0 dB and play it back at 16-bit and hear everything without much hiss/noise. This hiss is very audible when using 8-bit audio.

[Neosoft Support]

That's a good explanation. Thank you.