Bit Depth

Bit depth

Bit depth is sometimes called 'pixel depth' or 'colour depth'. Bit depth is the number of bits used to represent the colour of a single pixel. Bit depth also refers to the number of colours within a single pixel. 

BPP (Bits Per Pixel) refers to the number of bits in all three colour channels, this represents the number of colours available for each pixel. 

Monochrome palettes feature grey colours only, but grey from black to white, as both black and white are simply lighter and darker shades of grey. 

An 8-bit image will contain a palette of 256 colours in addition to raw image data. 

High Colour is a method of storing information on a computer using high colour graphics, this means that each pixel is represented by two bytes. 

True colour is needed to display an RGB (Red Green Blue) image. True colour features a 24 bit colour depth.