Previous versions of bmeps only produced 8 bits per component output.

Version 2.0.0 can produce 1, 2, 4, 8 and 12 bits per component in
\textsc{ps/eps} output and 1, 2, 4 and 8 bits per component in
\textsc{pdf} output.
If the input bpc value does not match one of these numbers,
bmeps attempts
to use the next larger value or restricts output to 12 or 8 bpc.