What is Bit Depth?
| Information Used To Represent Each Pixel |
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It can refer to a particular image saved with a specific format such as GIF or JPEG, or it can refer to the display settings of the video card and monitor of a system. An 8-bit image can display up to 256 different color values for each pixel. A 24-bit image can display more that 16 million colors. An image is described as "n bits color" where n is a number. This refers to the ColorDepths (the number of unique colors). In bit plane or raster graphics, each pixel has its color described by individual bits. Using more bits per pixel allows for more unique colors. The number of colors is equal to 2 raised to the power of the bit ColorDepths. One bit (1 bit plane) images have two colors, 2 bits have four colors, 3 bits have eight colors, et cetera. The most common bit ColorDepths are 8-bit (256 unique colors) and 24-bit (16,777,216 unique colors). Bit ColorDepths greater than 24-bits produce a wider color gamut (range). You can think of the bit-depth as describing a series of layers of a pixel with each layer representing one bit. Each layer can have a different value and the combination of all the layers determines the color of that specific pixel. |
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