High Color
   
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    Graphics Glossary

    		     
    GraphicsAcademy.com  >  Glossary  >  High Color

       

     

    High Color

    High Color describes bitmaps where the color of each pixel is defined by three separate Red, Green and Blue values (see RGB), and the total amount of color information stored for each pixel is either 15 or 16 bits.

    Note: Some recent Microsoft documentation uses "High Color" to refer to what we (and most others) call Deep Color.

    There are two high color systems:
    1. 16 bit high color: A total of 16 bits are used for storing color information, with 5 bits allocated for each of Red and Blue (allowing 32 possible values each), and 6 bits allocated to Green (allowing 64 possible values) - the greater range for Green being used because our eyes are more sensitive to shades of Green.

    2. 15 bit high color: Colors are still stored in 16 bit words, but only 15 bits are actually used for storing color information, plus an additonal unused is left in each word. The 15 bits are allocated: 5 bits allocated for each of Red, Green, and Blue (allowing 32 possible values each).
    The main alternative to storing color images in HighColor are True Color (where 24 bits or 32 bits are used for each pixel), or the use a lower color depth in combination with a palette specifying a more limited choice of possible colors to use in the image. When a palette is used, the information stored for each pixel is simply an index into the the palette, selecting one of the colors from the selection available.
    • The main advantage of using High Color (and True Color) is that it allows images to contain many different colors simultaneously. However, the disadvantage is that High Color (and True Color) images can use large amounts of memory or file storage.

    • The main advantage of using a palette is that it saves on memory and file storage. The disadvantage is that images with palettes can only contain a limited number of different colors (the number of colors being determined by the size of the palette).

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