Need some color depth expertise!

[Dana]

A question for any imaging gurus out there...

Monitor color depth is the issue. I'm having a debate regarding the necessary color depth setting to use on a monitor when working w/24 bit images (like the ones that come out of digital cameras and scanners).

Question is this - what is the affect of setting your display color depth to 16 bit vs. 24 bit. My contention is that the visual difference is virtually imperceptable. I've checked this time and again on different monitors and found that I can discern no significant difference when viewing 24 bit images at 16 vs. 24 bit color depth display settings.

My friend's contention is that the manner in which displays dither to 16 bit varies, and sometimes the dither appears as what people will think of as a digital image defect. In other words, results will be inconsistent and in some cases clear dithering will appear on-screen.

Anyone got any comments on this?

Thanks,

Dana

[PFlor]

This all depends on how good your eyes are. But in most cases you won't notice a difference between 16 and 24 bit color, especially if you have a good video card and monitor. Where you might notice it the most is when you have a lot of color gradations in your images, such as a sunset. So what bit depth to use? I would use the highest bit depth your computer can do without taking too much of a performance hit. I personally use 32bit color since this mode works best for my video card (ATI Radeon).

[Dana]

Thanks, Peter. This is more about recommending settings to folks w/older computers. I don't want to ask them to change settings (up from 16 bit, if that is where they are) unless there is an appreciable gain from that.

What you say is in line w/my experiences...thanks for replying.

Dana

[marcel wouters]

Well i am not really a guru but...
The 24 bit image is in fact an 8 bit image 8X3=24!
That's the normal way of working in most photo software. so you have only 256 levels foe each RGB colors.
Scanners could work in 36 or 48 bits, consumer camera like g3 works on 12 bits in linear (36 bits image), when converted in jpeg it's only 8 bits per color or 24 bits!
More than 8 bits could help when the image must be translated from one space to an other or you want to make a strong edition or retain slight details, this is used in the linear workflow. Then normally the image is translated to 8 bits before printing.
TFT use onlt 256 levels!
Hope this help!