Excursus: The coding of colors
2. Binary number system
Excursus: The coding of colors
A color is defined by its proportions of red, green and blue. The higher the proportion of red, for example, the redder the color. Colors are also represented using bit sequences. With 24 bits for a color value, we have 8 bits per color component. This means that the proportion of red, green and blue can each have values between 00000000 and 11111111.
The example shows how we can describe colors by their color components. While we hardly notice any difference with 24-bit colors when we change the least significant color bit (furthest to the right of each color), this is much more noticeable with 8-bit colors. Good to know that 24 bits are already sufficient. Because the more bits we need to describe a color point, the larger our digital photos would be.