What Does The Term "8-Bit" Mean?

You may have heard the terms 8-

bit and 16-bit before, but what do they
mean? Whenever you take a picture with
a digital camera and save it in the JPEG
format, you're creating a standard "8-bit"
image. The JPEG format has been around
for a long time and as digital photography
and even Photoshop itself continue to
advance, the limitations of the JPEG
format are becoming more and more
apparent. For one thing, there's no way to
save a JPEG file as 16-bit because the
format doesn't support 16-bit. If it's a
JPEG image (with the extension ".jpg"),
it's an 8-bit image. But what does that
mean, "8-bit"?

It doesn't matter what color you're looking

at on your screen. It's being made up of
some combination of those three colors.
You may be thinking, "That's impossible!
There's millions of colors in my image.
How can you create millions of colors out
of just red, green and blue?"
The answer is, by using
multiple shades of red, green and blue!
The more shades of each color you have
to work with and mix together, the more
colors you can create. If all you had was
pure red, pure green, and pure blue, the
most you could create would be seven
different colors, including white if you
mixed all three together:

You could also include an eigth color in

there as well, black, which you would get
if you completely removed red, green, and
blue.
But what if you had, say, 256 shades of
red, 256 shades of green, and 256 shades
of blue? If you do the the math, 256 times
256 times 256 equals roughly 16.8 million.
That's 16.8 million colors you can now
create! And that's exactly what you get
with an 8-bit image - 256 shades of red,
256 shades of green, and 256 shades of
blue, giving you the millions of possible
colors you usually see in a digital photo:

Where does the number 256 come from?

Well, 1-bit equals 2. When you move
beyond 1-bit, you find its value using the
expression "2 to the exponent (however
many bits there are)". So, for example, to
find the value of 2-bits, you would
calculate "2 to the exponent 2", or "2 x 2",
which equals 4. So 2-bits equals 4.
A 4-bit image would be "2 to the exponent
4", or "2 x 2 x 2 x 2", which gives us 16.
So 4-bits equals 16.
We do the same thing for an 8-bit image,
which would be "2 to the exponent 8", or
"2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2", which gives
us 256. That's where the number 256
comes from.
Don't worry if you found that confusing, or
even worse, boring. It all has to do with
how computers work. Just remember that
when you save an image as a JPEG,
you're saving it as an 8-bit image, which
gives you 256 shades each of red, green,
and blue, for a total of 16.8 million
possible colors.
As we just learned, saving a photo as a
JPEG creates an 8-bit image, which gives
us 16.8 million possible colors in our
image.
Difference between 8-bit and 16-bit
images.
Earlier, we learned that 8-bit images give
us 256 shades each of red, green and
blue, and we got that number using the
expression "2 to the exponent 8", or "2 x 2
x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2", which equals 256.
We can do the same thing to figure out
how many colors we can have in a 16-bit
image. All we need to do is calculate the
expression "2 to the exponent 16", or "2 x
2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2
x 2 x 2 x 2", which, if you don't have a
calculator handy, gives us 65,536. 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!

Understanding color
Knowing how colors are created and
how they relate to each other lets
you work more effectively in
Photoshop. Instead of achieving an
effect by accident, you’ll produce
consistent results thanks to an
understanding of basic color theory.
Primary colors
Additive primaries are the three
colors of light (red, green, and blue)
that produce all the colors in the
visible spectrum when added
together in different combinations.
Adding equal parts of red, blue, and
green light produces white. The
complete absence of red, blue, and
green light results in black.
Computer monitors are devices that
use the additive primaries to create
color.

Additive colors (RGB)

A. Red B. Green C. Blue

Subtractive primaries are pigments,
which create a spectrum of colors in
different combinations. Unlike
monitors, printers use subtractive
primaries (cyan, magenta, yellow,
and black pigments) to produce
colors through subtractive mixing.
The term “subtractive” is used
because the primary colors are pure
until you begin mixing them
together, resulting in colors that are
less pure versions of the primaries.
For example, orange is created
through the subtractive mixing of
magenta and yellow together.

Subtractive colors (CMYK)

A. Cyan B. Magenta C. Yellow D. Bla

ck
The color wheel
If you’re new to adjusting color
components, it helps to keep a
standard color wheel diagram on
hand when you work on color
balance. You can use the color wheel
to predict how a change in one color
component affects other colors and
also how changes translate between
RGB and CMYK color models.

Color wheel

A. Red B. Yellow C. Green D. Cyan E

. Blue F. Magenta
For example, you can decrease the
amount of any color in an image by
increasing the amount of its opposite
on the color wheel—and vice versa.
Colors that lie opposite each other
on the standard color wheel are
known as complementary colors.
Similarly, you can increase and
decrease a color by adjusting the
two adjacent colors on the wheel, or
even by adjusting the two colors
adjacent to its opposite.
In a CMYK image, you can decrease
magenta either by decreasing the
amount of magenta or by increasing
its complement, which is green (the
color on the opposite side of the
color wheel from magenta). In an
RGB image, you can decrease
magenta by removing red and blue
or by adding green. All of these
adjustments result in an overall color
balance containing less magenta.

Adjust color hue, saturation, and

brightness
Based on the human perception of
color, the HSB model describes three
fundamental characteristics of color:
Hue
Color reflected from or transmitted
through an object. It is measured as
a location on the standard color
wheel, expressed as a degree
between 0° and 360°. In common
use, hue is identified by the name of
the color, such as red, orange, or
green.
Saturation
Strength or purity of the color
(sometimes called chroma).
Saturation represents the amount of
gray in proportion to the hue,
measured as a percentage from 0%
(gray) to 100% (fully saturated). On
the standard color wheel, saturation
increases from the center to the
edge.
Brightness
Relative lightness or darkness of the
color, usually measured as a
percentage from 0% (black) to 100%
(white).
HSB color model

A. Hue B. Saturation C. Brightness