rgb888

RGB888 is a color representation in the RGB color model in which each of the three primary colors—red, green, and blue—is stored with 8 bits. This yields 24 bits per pixel and 16,777,216 possible colors. The term is often used to denote true color, as it provides a wide range of colors suitable for photographic images and graphics.

In practice, a pixel is described by a triple (R, G, B), with each component ranging from 0 to 255. A common textual representation is the hexadecimal 24-bit color value, such as 0xRRGGBB, or the comma-separated form (R, G, B). Depending on the system, the pixel data may be stored as three consecutive bytes or packed as a 24-bit word; some formats may use BGR ordering due to endianness.

Applications: RGB888 is widely used in computer displays, image and video formats, and graphics APIs that assume 8 bits per channel. It is the standard color depth in many image files (e.g., PNG, JPEG) and in most consumer graphics pipelines.

Relation to other color depths: RGB888 is contrasted with RGB565 (16-bit, 5 bits red and blue, 6 bits green) and RGB8888 (32-bit, adding an alpha channel). Some systems also offer higher bit depths or linear color spaces, which may be converted to or from 8-bit-per-channel sRGB values for display.

History and context: As displays progressed toward true color in the late 1980s and 1990s, 24-bit color became the standard in many graphics environments, setting a baseline for image realism and color accuracy on mainstream devices.