Bit depths

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How many bits represent the color in a single pixel. The higher the bit depth, the more colors possible. As you can see below, these bits are broken into groups called color channels.

Common Bit Depths: (2bits)

21 = 2 colors  : Also known as monochrome. Usually black and white.
24 = 16 colors  : Think back to the days of windows 3.1 and MSpaint.
28 = 256 colors  : Think of your standard GIF quality.
216 = 65,536 colors  : Hey, we are getting more modern. In RGB setups, 1 bit is wasted.
224 = 16,777,216 colors  : Not really used as 4 bytes can be processed faster than three.
232 = 4,294,967,296 colors  : 256 Red×256 Green×256 Blue×256 'something' (usally transparency or alpha channel)
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