In my humble opinion, correct me please:
If we're scanning B&W film, choice of bit-depth is more important: 16-bit is preferable to 8-bit, to avoid banding as adjustments are made.
When scanning B&W (or converting to B&W from a color file) consider making TIF files in 16-bit Adobe Gray Gamma 2.2 color space. If you can't specify the color space, at least make a 16-bit B&W TIF, which has lossless 16-bit depth.
When saving images for display on the internet, you can always convert to a compressed (and lossy) format like 8-bit JPG.
If you already have 8-bit B&W scans, you can convert them to 16-bit before making further adjustments, as described in this short article:
How (and why) to Convert Images from 8 to 16 bit in Photoshop. I don't know how to do this in Lightroom. I recommend Photoshop and
30 Days of Photoshop, a free series from PHLEARN is a terrific place to start.
Speaking of 16-bit, you might want to investigate the Quadtone RIP and Print-Tool (and Piezography which uses them) because (as far as I know) unlike the OEM drivers, they can send 16-bit data to the printer, while typical OEM printer software is 8-bit only.
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