🚀 go-pugleaf

Also, some systems with >24bit colour depth use the extra bits as 'alpha' bits.
I think the colour versions of the NeXT systems did this.

Useful for things like transparancy.



ro...@netcom.com (Rob Jellinghaus) wrote:
>In article <3csf57$l...@mojo.eng.umd.edu> doc...@eng.umd.edu (John Sabean) writes:
>>Actually, some of the SGI's can do more than 24 bit color. I forget if it
>>is 32 or 64 bit, but I know its more than 24 bit. I had the same discussion
>>with a few friends, "Could you feasibly ever need it or use it?"  We couldn't
>>really think of any applications for it. We got this information from a catalog
>>from Silicon Graphics. It does indeed exist..... (Those guys are crazy! :)
>
>You can't think of applications for it because you don't do graphics for
>a living.  I work for Autodesk, makers of 3D Studio (a rather, ahem,
>well-known 3D graphics package).  3D Studio, as of release 4, does
>much of its internal rendering in a 64-bit color space.  Why?  Because
>the human eye can distinguish an absolutely huge number of colors,
>especially when slightly different colors are visually adjacent.  Ever
>heard of gamma correction?  It is modifications to color space made to
>compensate for the color distortions of particular monitors or
>printers.  24 bits is not enough to do gamma correction properly.
>
>I don't know of any PC graphics boards that can display more than 24
>bits per pixel, but the extra color information is put to good use in
>choosing exactly what those 24 bits will be.  The 64-bit depth of 3D
>Studio (a PC program, btw) gives images much more "richness" and
>"depth" (according to our marketing literature and our customers'
>comments).  Don't underestimate your eyeballs... they are very very
>good at what they do, and computers are only just catching up.
>
>
>--
>Rob Jellinghaus       ro...@netcom.com       uunet!netcom!robj