Bit depth vs gamut

[Chuck Koehler]

Bit Depth has nothing to do with the Box of Crayons

Bit Depth has nothing to do with the Box of Crayons

Hello MrRWright,

Per my previous post, The Crayon Box is the Gamut & and the number of Crayons in the Box is the Gamut Volume.

The bit Depth would be the list of contents printed on the box or in other words the names of the crayons that are in the Box. There may be many crayons that aren't in our box that are never listed!

Here is a good description of Bit Depth:

8 Bit Color vs 16 Bit Color - Working With 16 bit Images In Photoshop, Page 2

Some Exerpts:

A JPEG creates an 8-bit image, which gives us 16.8 million possible colors in our image.

That means that when working with 16-bit images, we have 65,536 shades of red, 65,536 shades of green, and 65,536 shades of blue. Forget about 16.8 million! 65,536 x 65,536 x 65,536 gives us an incredible 281 trillion possible colors!!

SO, That gives us either 16.8 Million Possible Color Descriptions, or 281 Trillion Possible Color Descriptions, BUT: Gamut Work from Monaco shows that AdobeRGB is about 2.5 million, and sRGB 1.4 million.

So when you pick up the potato chip bag in the store and it only feels half full you need to realize that they are packed by weight and not volume!...

OK, So I never understood that either! What does weight or volume have to do with only filling up the bag half way?

Chuck

 

[parluciaga]

Lego v/s Duplo

Lego v/s Duplo

If we had to build a fixed-size 3D depiction of a profile, and we had magical toy bricks that could turn to any color we wanted, 8bit would be like building it with Duplo (bigger) bricks, while 16bit would be like using Lego bricks.
Even though we could choose the exact Lab color for every brick, we would end up with less colors using Duplo bricks, just because they use more space.
Makes sense?

Patricio

 

[Chuck Koehler]

Great Analogy, but still missing the Mark

Great Analogy, but still missing the Mark

For example:

a fixed-size 3D depiction of a profile = Gamut

magical toy bricks that could turn to any color = Gamut Volume

Bit Depth does not equate to how many colors can be reproduced, but how many steps there are between colors.

8bit sRGB would be like building it with Duplo (bigger) bricks, while 16bit Adobe RGB would be like using Lego bricks.

Even though we could choose the exact Lab color for every brick, we would end up with less colors using Duplo bricks, just because they use more space.
Makes sense?
Now Makes Sense!

Regards,

Chuck

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

Toy stores are gonna run low on lego bricks when we all go to build our gamut models

 

[parluciaga]

Lego...

Lego...

@Chuck: I was thinking more about "Volumetric resolution" with the Lego v/s Duplo analogy. So the fixed size model would be the same profile rendered in "Hi-res" with Lego blocks (16 bit) or in "Lo-res" with Duplo blocks (8 bit).
A different profile would be bigger (ProPhoto) or smaller (sRGB), with the size (volume) representing Gamut and the block type representing the bit depth.
I guess it's not that good as analogy if it requires explanation, but I just wanted to clarify my intention (intent?).

@Lukas: I'd love to have a Lego sRGB (or Fogra39) model, but I'd have to keep it away from my kids