Bit depth / Colour depth

Kleurdiepte · Technique

The number of bits used to record the colour of a single pixel.

8-bit per channel gives 256 shades per colour (red, green, blue), totalling over 16 million colours. 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 colour banding.

Tools that help with this:

Camera Settings Advisor EXIF Viewer

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