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Color depth, also known as bit depth, is either the number of bits used to indicate the color of a single pixel, or the number of bits used for each color component of a single pixel. When referring to a pixel, the concept can be defined as bits per pixel (bpp).
8-bit color graphics are a method of storing image information in a computer's memory or in an image file, so that each pixel is represented by 8 bits (1 byte). The maximum number of colors that can be displayed at any one time is 256 per pixel or 2 8 .
The 4-bit per pixel (4bpp) format supports 16 distinct colors and stores 2 pixels per 1 byte, the left-most pixel being in the more significant nibble. [5] Each pixel value is a 4-bit index into a table of up to 16 colors. The 8-bit per pixel (8bpp) format supports 256 distinct colors and stores 1 pixel per 1 byte.
In an 8-bit color palette each pixel's value is represented by 8 bits resulting in a 256-value palette (2 8 = 256). This is usually the maximum number of grays in ordinary monochrome systems; each image pixel occupies a single memory byte.
The number of distinct colors that can be represented by a pixel depends on the number of bits per pixel (bpp). A 1 bpp image uses 1 bit for each pixel, so each pixel can be either on or off. Each additional bit doubles the number of colors available, so a 2 bpp image can have 4 colors, and a 3 bpp image can have 8 colors:
Current typical display adapters use up to 24 bits of information for each pixel: 8-bit per component multiplied by three components (see the Numeric representations section below (24 bits = 256 3, each primary value of 8 bits with values of 0–255).
As of 2019, the most common image colorspace in graphics cards is the RGB color model with 8 bits per pixel color depth.Using this technique, 8 bits per pixel are used to describe the luminance level in each of the RGB channels, therefore 24 bits fully describe the color of each pixel.
Usually the color is represented by all 16 bits, but some devices also support 15-bit high color. [1] In Windows 7, Microsoft used the term high color to identify display systems that can make use of more than 8-bits per color channel (10:10:10:2 or 16:16:16:16 rendering formats) from traditional 8-bit per color channel formats. [2]