[Blog Post] MSI at last!

[Jorge_Stolfi]

isn't this a huge waste? 94% of the available tonal range just is not used

Scaling the pixel values from 0..2300 to 0.65535 would add no information and would only introduce noise.  

Plus, if the cameras and lights were properly calibrated, the unscaled pixel values should let one compute the physical brightness (watts per square meter) and the actual albedo (fraction of light that is scattered).  Then, if the pixels range 0..2000 for one page and 0..4000 in another, with the same lighting, it means that the vellum of the former is much darker overall than that of the second.  

What IS a big waste is using the inefficient TIFF format for those images.  There are other image formats that can store the same data, without losing a single bit, in a much smaller file.  (Even PNG gives a 50% reduction.) But TIFF has been the standard "full resolution" format for the last 40 years -- and no profession is more conservative and averse to change than Information Technology... 

All the best, --stolfi