unsigned images

[Russell E. Owen]

Did the FITS committee ever come up with a standard for handling 16-bit
unsigned images correctly?

If not, has any large organization come up with their own private standard?

I have great antipathy to converting all my data as its written, and then
converting it again as it's read out. Like most night-time astronomical
applications, our cameras all produce 16-bit unsigned data. It is a huge
advantage to be able to read and write this data in a single operation
w/out converting it first.

-- Russell