Patch/11bit

[ieivanov]

Patch to help me read and write 11bit NDTiff datasets. This is not a permanent solution to micro-manager/pycro-manager#536. The reader and writer should not enumerate all possible pixel types. Instead, for example, pixel types between 8-bit and 16-bit should all be written as uint16 data type.

[henrypinkard]

Ah good insight that this is the source of the problem!

Instead, for example, pixel types between 8-bit and 16-bit should all be written as uint16 data type.

This is how it works already, the reason the other bit depths are their own pixel types is that they are an "essential" piece of metadata belonging to the image (like, width and height) that should be kept separate from other image metadata, because they are required for things to work correctly, and there is no mechanism for specifying required metadata currently other than adding it to the API.

However, this was initially not how I designed things, so in order to make things work without making backwards incompatible changes to NDTiff I added these other pixels types.

There's definitely a larger discussion to be had about this essential image metadata in concert with the next iteration of file saving (micro-manager/mmCoreAndDevices#323).

But for now I think this (and maybe enumerating the other pixel types as well) are the cleanest way to keep everything properly working.

I will also look into why a more useful error wasn't generated in relation to this.