Whats the difference between 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit modes?
A bit is a unit of information that represents color. The number of colors for a bit is determined by 2n, where n represents the number of bits. For example, 1 Bit = 21 = 2 shades of color. 8-bit mode is 28, giving you 256 colors, which is the most common for VGA displays. 16-bit has 65,536 colors and 32-bit has over 4.2 billion colors. 16-bit and 32-bit color modes drive up your file size when in use, but contain more true to life colors. Unfortunately, some tools cannot be used in these modes. So what’s the use then for 16 and 32-bit? In high-end photography, 16-bit mode is sometimes used to help separate out highlights and shadows, same with 32-bit, but 16-bit is used more often. Go here for more information and examples: [link] Here’s a little more 32bit mode info for ya, courtesy of =freixas: 32-bit is a 4-byte floating point number. Generally, 0.0 represents black and 1.0 represents white, but unlike 8- and 16-bit modes, the values are not clamped to this range. In other words, p
