Bit depth / Color depth
Kleurdiepte · Technique
The number of bits used to record the color of a single pixel.
8-bit per channel gives 256 shades per color (red, green, blue), totalling over 16 million colors. 16-bit gives 65,536 shades per channel. RAW files contain 12 or 14 bits per channel. For heavy editing, working in 16-bit is recommended to prevent color banding.
Tools that help with this: