On 5 Jan 2002 at 16:33, Shel Belinkoff wrote: > OK, let's look at it this way. Let's say we have a pixel, which we'll > equate to an artist's canvas, and it's eight bits, and each bit is the > equivalent of a can of paint of a different color. If the artist - or > in this case the scanner - wants to paint a picture on the canvas, there > are only so many colors that he can choose from, or mix. If each pixel > had 16 bits, or 16 colors of paint, more colors could be mixed, and so > on for 24 bits, 32 bits, etc. The more cans of different colors of > paint there are, the more colors there are that can be created, and > colors can be "blended" to produce smoother transitions. Is this > something like bit depth? > > Am I getting close?
No. It's more fundamental than that. There are only three sampled colours. The colour gamut that the scanner can represent is a function of the mix of these three colours vs the number of values of intensity that can be recorded. A bit is an arbitrary component of the binary digital number system. A conventional digital computer system can only represent numbers or any other data as a series of bits (8 Bits per Byte). Hence it uses a a number of bits (8,10,12 etc) to represent the measured intensity value of that colour. Consider a dichroic filter head on a colour enlarger, you know how you can mix the three colours to produce white light or a colour? Well instead of the colour filters being continuously variable consider that they can only be turned in pre-set increments. These increments would be analogous to steps in a digital system. Does this make any sense? Cheers, Rob Studdert HURSTVILLE AUSTRALIA Tel +61-2-9554-4110 UTC(GMT) +10 Hours [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://members.ozemail.com.au/~distudio/publications.html - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
