From: "Tanya Mayer Photography" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Oh, and one more thing, that I have been meaning to ask for ages, and I fear > that I may be opening a can of worms here <vbg> but can someone explain to > me about "bits" ie what is the difference between 8 bit and 16 bit files?
With 16 bits, the file will be able to describe 65536 different hues in each colour channel ( red, green or blue), whereas with 8 bits, the file will describe up to 256 different hues in each colour channel. The logic of "bits" goes like this: A bit is basically one digit in a binary number. eg. 100110 contains six digits, or six bits. Since each bit can only hold the values 1 or 0, you need a lot of them in a row to make reasonably big numbers. The way they add up to ordinary numbers goes like this: Binary => ordinary 000 => 0 001 => 1 010 => 2 011 => 3 100 => 4 101 => 5 and so on. If you use a binary number consisting of 8 bits, the maximum ordinary value you can represent is 256 (2 to the power of 8). If you use a binary number consisting of 16 bits, the maximum ordiary value you can represent is 65536 (2 to the power of 16). hth, Jostein
