Hi Stuart,
16-bit is a growing demand, not an old format. Yes there are some
applications, and some very old and yet very popular ones such as MS
Flightsimulator and other games that use extended Bitmap formats, 16
bits to cram rgb and akpha into it, typically in 4444 arangements or
similar weird formats like 5551 (5 bits each for r,g,b and 1 bit for
alpha), and yes these are inferior in quality to 8 bits per channel
found with 24 or 32 bit depths. But, the 16-bit formats are much more
memory compressed and often faster to process in games especially.
But I doubt this was the reason for the opriginal question. 16 bit
depth is also growingly used in medical imaging for greyscale with
much more detail than 8 bits per channel could give you. And also in
3D for high quality elevation maps (like aps like Bryce or similar)
Try Martin Wright's free conversion tools. You'll find links to it in
Project Dogwaffle's 3rd party lugins section.
--- In gimpwin-users%40yahoogroups.com">gimpwin-users
yahoogroups.com, Stuart Halliday <stuart...> wrote:
>
> I believe Lincoln Lordello wrote this email section below:
> > How can I create a 16-bit BMP file with Gimp or ImageMagick?
> > Thanks.
>
> You can't. Why would you want a 16bit file with GIMP?
>;
> Thankfully its a 24/32bit bitmap editor.
>
> Not even Paint supports the saving of old 16bit BMPs. 
>
>
> This isn't a ImageMagick mailing list.
>; But you need to look at the convert file.
>; I've not used it in ages but perhaps the -depth option is what you
need to use?
>
> http://www.imagemagick.org/script/command-line-options.php#depth
>
> --
> Stuart Halliday
> http://mytriops.com/
> 200 Million years in the making...
>
.