RE: Dynamic range and bit depth
RE: Dynamic range and bit depth
- Subject: RE: Dynamic range and bit depth
- From: Lars Borg <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2000 10:00:56 -0800
Dynamic range and bit depth are not trivially related.
The dynamic range depends on the transfer curve of the device. Consider two bit depths:
1. Your typical RGB color space uses 8 bits per channel and a gamma of 2.2. It's dynamic range from digital count 1-255 is 1 : 255^2.2 or 1 : 196,967
2. Change the gamma of this color space to 1.0, and you need more than 16 bits to represent the darkest color of space #1. You have more bits but the dynamic range is only 1:65,535
Lars Borg
Adobe Systems