Perhaps I am misunderstanding something, I just got Photoshop CS4 and have started playing around with ACR.

I had previously played around with lightroom but didn't buy it, so I have a pretty good understanding of how to optimize the raw image.

What I haven't figured out is when I click "Open Image" the file is brought into Photoshop as an 8-bit per channel image.

Is there a way to import it as a 16-bit image?

Thanks!

There is a blue line under the image, looks like a link, containing sRGB, 8bit, image size, etc. Click on it and you get into the dialog to change these options.

Thanks! I had not gotten around to setting all the color management options up, it sounds like this would also
be the place to tell it to open as ProPhotoRGB as well.