What is the difference between 8 Bit and 16 Bit Color?

8 bits and 16-bit color are digital color. Digital images are a combination of three primary colors, which are red, green, and blue. The 8-bit color graphics is represented by using an 8-bit byte. It can be expressed as 2 to 8, which gives 256 that is 256 shades of red, 256 shades of blue and 256 shades of blue. There is a possible combination of over 16.8 million colors in the 8 bit colors. While there is a possible combination of 281 trillion colors in the 16 bits.

The 16 bit is expressed as 2 to 16, which is equivalent to 65,536, which is 65.536 shades of all the colors. The 16 bits are shared amongst the colors, 5 bits are used for red, 6 bits are used for green, and 5 bits are used for blue.

The 8 bit and 16 bit are two different types of graphics made in which the image formation is kept in a computer’s memory or an image file. In 8-bit mode, each pixel is designated by 8-bit bytes. In a 16 bit, each pixel is designated to two bytes. Digital images are colored by the permutation of three primary colors of light, and this includes red, green, and blue.

There are 256 of each color on an 8 byte. However, on a 16-byte color graphics of each pixel is represented by using sixteen-bit byte. There are 6553 shades of each color. In 16 bytes, 5 bits are used for red, 6 bits are used for green, and 5 bits are used for blue. The file size becomes more by using 16-byte color.

It is of clarity that the 16-bit color makes use of double of the 8-bit color. The numbers of colors that can be possibly represented by these 8-bit color and 16-bit color vary, and this form one major difference between them.

A single pixel in an 8-bit color can contain any of the 256 available colors (28), whereas one single pixel in a 16-bit color can contain any of the 65,536 available color combinations (216). This greater palette of colors helps you to obtain shade graduations that are smoother and ended up, resulting in a picture that looks better and more realistic. There is actually an added demand for a computer to process the 16-bit color, which is like a disadvantage of using the 16-bit color. Pictures that are made with 16 bit usually have larger file size, and this makes them take longer time processing on the system.