On Oct 27, 2005, at 7:18 AM, Peter Plessas wrote:
although i am not sure where the difference between 16bit and 24bit is
in everyday use (sounds stupid but i don't see any difference).
24-bit depth provides 8 bits per color (red, green and blue) per pixel
-- for a total of 256 x 256 x 256 = 16.777 Million colors. 16-bit depth
provides 5 bits per color per pixel for red and blue (I think it is) and
6 bits per color per pixel for green (I think) -- for a total of 32 x 32
x 65 = 65536 colors. The old MacOS-9 video drivers used to refer to
this difference as "millions of colors" vs "thousands of colors".
24-bit color provides more subtle shading, and this can be important in
some fine-arts applications. 16-bit color uses less video RAM and may
be faster in some applications. On most video screens, and for most
purposes, the difference is almost invisible. So it's not at all stupid
that you don't see any difference in everyday use.
Rick