What does 10Bit color mean

[X-Caliber]

I guess the subject says it all, what exactly does 10-bit color mean? How does it compare with 24/32 bit color depth?

Thanks,

-V-

[Wombat]

24/32 bit color depth is actually 8-bits for each of Red, Green, and Blue. 10-bit color means 10-bits for each of these.

[X-Caliber]

okay, so 24bit => 8bit Red, 8bit Green, and 8bit Blue

=> 10 bit color should mean: 10bit Red, 10bit Green, 10bit Blue.

Then what does 32bit color mean? Also, not to sound too stupid, what exactly does 8bit color mean?? ie: what does it mean to have 8bits of Red or 8bits of Green, etc. ??

[Gurm]

Ahem.

32 bit color means 8R, 8B, 8G, 8Alpha (yeah for the purpose of desktop applications it's exactly the same as 24bit).

8bit color means that there are... 8 bits set aside for each color channel. That means 256 distinct red, blue, and green levels. That adds up to a total of 16.7 million individual colors.

- Gurm

[Chrono_Wanderer]

In computers, rule of thumb, always think in 2

2^8 = 256, that's the amount of "shades" in each color channel in 8bit Color (per channel)
vs.
2^10 = 1024, that's the amount of "shades" in each color chnannel in 10bit Gigacolor

so...

You don't really add them up, but you multiply the numbers to get the total amount of color you can get out of these color channels (multiply makes sense)

so...

in 24bit color
256x256x256 = 16.7 million color

in 32bit color its also the same, but it has a transparency (aka the alpha channel)
256Red, 256Blue, 256Green, 256 Transparency levels = 16.7 million color

in 10bit mode...

1024x1024x1024 = 1 billion colors. BUT for Matrox's Gigacolor, the alpha channel has only 2bit... lol... which is not that great. (2^2 = 4, so only 4 levels of transparency lol)

Too bad they didn't Alpha 10bit!

[XHotKolaX]

But the "transparencies" would actually be colours dithered between the 1024 Red, Green, or Blue.

You end up with 256 levels between the 10bit RGB using 2bit alpha.

[Chrono_Wanderer]

oh ya. that's true, never thought of that

[X-Caliber]

how are you defining "transparencies" ?

[XHotKolaX]

Well, transparencies don't really exist. To make transparencies, you just dither the RGB together to get the effect.

[BuddMan]

Err, are you confusing the term transitions with transparencies (I might be wrong, I'm just wondering)?