Bitinleveydellä

Bitinleveydellä, often translated as "bit depth" or "color depth," refers to the number of bits used to represent the color of a single pixel in a digital image or video. A higher bit depth allows for a wider range of colors and smoother transitions between them.

For example, an 8-bit image can represent 256 different colors per channel (red, green, blue). This results in a total of 256 x 256 x 256 = 16,777,216 possible colors. However, in practice, 8-bit images often use 256 colors in total, which can lead to banding artifacts in gradients.

Standard formats like JPEG and PNG typically use 8 bits per channel, totaling 24 bits for a standard RGB image. This is known as true color. However, for professional applications like photography, graphic design, and video editing, higher bit depths are often employed.

10-bit, 12-bit, or even 16-bit per channel color provides a significantly larger range of colors and tonal gradations. A 10-bit image, for instance, can represent 1024 different shades per channel, resulting in over a billion possible colors. This increased color information is crucial for precise color correction, avoiding posterization, and achieving more lifelike images, especially in high dynamic range (HDR) content. The larger file sizes associated with higher bit depths are a trade-off for this enhanced color fidelity.