directcolor

DirectColor is a hardware feature found in some graphics cards that allows pixels to be displayed with a greater range of colors than previously possible with older methods like palette-based color. Instead of relying on a predefined lookup table (palette), DirectColor assigns a specific number of bits to represent the red, green, and blue components of each pixel directly. This results in a much richer and more realistic depiction of colors, eliminating the "banding" or "posterization" effects that could occur when a limited palette was insufficient to represent smooth color transitions.

The number of bits allocated to each color channel can vary, leading to different color depths. For example, 16-bit color, often referred to as HighColor, typically uses 5 bits for red, 6 bits for green, and 5 bits for blue, allowing for 65,536 distinct colors. TrueColor, on the other hand, uses 24 bits (8 bits per channel), offering over 16.7 million colors, which is generally considered sufficient for human perception to distinguish individual colors. The implementation of DirectColor significantly improved the visual quality of graphics, especially in applications like gaming, image editing, and video playback.