Now that Photoshop CS supports much more image correction in 16-bit mode, I wonder if it is worth the trouble.

The good news is that while 8-bit B&W gives 256 shades of grey, 16-bit gives 256 * 256 shades of grey: quite a lot, a "Zone System" with well over 65,000 zones. The downside, of course, is that files are much larger, slower to work on, and more resource-expensive to save.

Up to now, I have always scanned at 16-bit, but eventually "down-sized", saved and printed as 8-bit files. They arleady look pretty good.

Upon close examination, I can see the difference on screen, between the 16 and 8 bit files, but wonder if the extra storage requirements and processing slowness result in an image which is appreciably finer in quality when printed.

Any experience with this ? Thanks