User Guide

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Bit depth is the number of bits used to
describe each pixel in a bitmap. The bit
depth describes the amount of color or
grayscale information conveyed by a
pixel. A black-and-white bitmap has a
bit depth of one. Each pixel can be
either 0 or 1, which correspond to black
and white.
Grayscale images can have bit depths of
either 4 or 8. A 4-bit grayscale image
has 16 shades of gray; an 8-bit image
has 256 shades of gray.
1-bit black-and- 8-bit grayscale
white image image
Color images can have bit depths of
4, 8, 16, and 24. A 4-bit color image
has 16 colors, an 8-bit image has 256
colors, a 16-bit image has thousands of
colors, and a 24-bit image has millions
of colors.