Learn about noise and dithering. You can have seamless blue skies with 8 bits that way.

It’s more a fault of the camera applying excessive noise reduction than the format.

Besides, if we’re worried about file sizes, 16 bit files are humongous.

jpegli is an even better option -- it adds 10+ bits in old jpeg format in its '8-bit mode'

I know about adding noise, but to call that a solution is silly. You’re purposely degrading the image to get around the technical limitations of a 30 year old format.

I disagree about the noise reduction part too. Modern (larger, not sure about cell phone) sensors basically have basically no noise at ISO 64-100 or so. It’s just an inherent limitation of only having 255 steps of brightness.

Dithering is a feature. It’s used all the time in audio and image. And a little bit of noise is a good thing. Two of my favorite sources on the subject:

https://youtu.be/cIQ9IXSUzuM?t=700

https://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photogr...