I see a lot of confusing from people anywhere a "bit" is involved, really just trying to help others understand it better that its a set quantity of digital size and whether you are talking computer displays, image files, mp3 music or modems it doesn't matter a bit is still a bit and once you ounderstand eight of the buggers make a byte you can start working out stuff. Like 100Mbps network card has a size component and a time one so you can easily work out answers relating to both.
I'm not an expert, i badly wish I was as I really love mathematics. generally I always work in the highest bit depth I can, its rarely noticable on screen until the very end. lots of steps in a workflow add up in the end to a real different (hopefull improvement). Only when I'm happy the processing is complete do I start to downgrade to a lower bit depth for my output needs. Usually a 16bit PNG and 8bit JPG for AP is all I need for uploading to astrobin, printing and easy sharing/viewing. I always retain my 64bit master integration file plus the 64bit fully processed file too.
Just to confuse things further those of us old enough to remember compact discs
may recall seeing 1bit error correction and 8bit error correction printed on CD players. logically 8bit should be better but the method of error correction that was used was a cascade process where it would resample a single bit multiple times and single bit correction was best since a single bit was all that could be stored. read once its either 0 or 1, so decide and store, 8 bit would do it 8 times iteratively in a 1bit space so it could reinforce an incorrect reading with each successive reading.
I'll shut up now, sorry
