8 Bit vs 10 Bit Color

I’ve got to be honest, color depth is something that I’ve only recently started to look into in the past couple years. Understanding the difference and key benefits of higher color depth has allowed me to really dive into my color correcting/grading with more precision. Not to mention my production process when it comes to lighting and exposure. My methods have slightly changed to make sure I’m grabbing the image needed according to the color space that I am working with at any given time.

Though the word ‘bit’ is also used in this term, Bit Depth actually describes something completely different. Bit Depth, aka Color Depth, describes the amount of information stored in each pixel of data. As you increase bit depth, you also increase the number of colors that can be represented. In the case of an 8-bit RGB image, each pixel has 8-bits of data per color (RGB), so for each color channel the pixel has 28 = 256possible variations. In the case of a 10-bit RGB image, each color channel would have 210 = 1024 variations.