Re: There are no stupid questions....
Re: There are no stupid questions....
- Subject: Re: There are no stupid questions....
- From: email@hidden (Bruce Fraser)
- Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2001 15:24:22 -0700
At 2:53 PM -0800 10/31/01, Robin Myers wrote:
Anthony Sanna wrote:
8-bit = 256 shades = 16,777,216 RGB colors (all correct)
14-bits = 16,384 shades = 4,398,046,511,104 RGB colors (1st part correct)
8-bit = 65,536 shades = 281,474,967,710,656 RGB colors (1st part correct,
but instead of "almost 3 billion" colors as Bruce figures, I've got 281
trillion colors)
So..... What am I missing here? I just know it's going to be one of
those throw-up-the-arms, slap-the-forehead, and say "doh" answers.
...but then I haven't been much good at math since that trip in '68, when
I saw all these numbers & formulas float up through the top of my head
and drift off into space.
I think you meant 16-bit = 65,536 shades...
However, for 16-bit values per channel, the theoretical maximum is (2^16)^3
which is, indeed, 2.8147x10^14 (^ means to the power of). You are correct.
There is an issue that people overlook which is very important. You cannot
get 256 shades on an 8-bit display that exhibits a non-linear response. The
actual achievable number of shades on a non-linear monitor is much lower.
OK, I've learned to spell lots of words with letters missing, like
color and behavior and aluminum, but I'm a Scot, and I meant proper
British billions, not those wimpy american ones! (A British billion
is 1,000,000,000,000,000, or what you Yanks call a trillion.)
Just another example of two peoples separated by a common language...
(And as Robin notes, these are color definitions, not colors. Besides
which, you'd need an awfully big monitor to display even 16.7 million
colors. My monitor only has 1,920,000 pixels...)
Bruce
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