I scan with a Creo IQSmart3, and it produces what is basically a RAW scan. I can then open that RAW scan into whatever manner I want, however even when I know my ultimate goal is a B&W image I still output it as 16 bit RGB. This gives me the most useable information and bit depth. If I need to make drastic tone alterations instead of doing it to one Gray channel (if it were not an RGB file) and possibly getting tonal clipping, a "comb" effect on the histogram, I can make differing alterations to each RGB channel, and then when I do convert the file to appear monochrome ( appearance only, it's still an RGB file) those differing color channels are far less likely to produce a comb effect.
