Re: 8 bit vs. more bits
Re: 8 bit vs. more bits
- Subject: Re: 8 bit vs. more bits
- From: Ray Maxwell <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 19:10:44 -0700
Hi Mark,
I agree with your first sentence.
I respectfully disagree with statements 1 and 2.
1. Since you do not state if you are talking about producing a smooth
gradient, I will have to assume that is what you mean. It is not
necessary to only move one unit out of 16.7 million values in adjacent
pixels to produce a smooth appearing gradient. It depends on the
spacing and amplitude of the pixel values. The closer the spacing the
bigger the jumps that still produce a smooth appearance. I suggest
that you open Photoshop and click on the "Color" tab and have a look at
the bottom of this display. Here you will see the full range of
colors. It appears smooth on my monitor. All 16.7 million values are
not used to create this display. No dithering is used in this
representation.
2. Once again you have assumed that you have to have adjacent pixels
only differ by one unit to look smooth. This is not true.
If you read how to create gradients in Illustrator it does a good job of
explaining the trade off of amplitude vs. spacing when creating smooth
vignettes.
Ray Maxwell
Mark Rice wrote:
There certainly have been a lot of specious and non-scientific arguments on
this subject lately.
I would like to establish several things:
1. Viewing a monitor to detect differences in 8 bit vs. more bits is a
thankless task. Have you ever asked yourself, how can I get the 16.7 million
colors promised by 8 bit (or 24 bit for 3 colors) from only 1024 lines of
video resolution? YOU CAN'T!!!. We simulate it with dithering.
2. Can a color printing device display 16.7 million colors? Not likely. The
Durst Lambda, at 400 dpi, would need to make a print 3,479 FEET long in
order to use all 16.7 million colors! So dithering is also used in printing
devices.
Both of the above statements are true
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