Bit depth tutorial

[ijbrewst]

Hope I'm not showing complete ignorance, but is the last line of the following quote from the Bit Depth Tutorial mixed up?

"Most color images from digital cameras have 8-bits per channel and so they can use a total of eight 0's and 1's. This allows for 28 or 256 different combinations—translating into 256 different intensity values for each primary color. When all three primary colors are combined at each pixel, this allows for as many as 28*3 or 16,777,216 different colors, or "true color." This is referred to as 24 bits per pixel since each pixel is composed of three 8-bit color channels. The number of colors available for any X-bit image is just 2X if X refers to the bits per pixel and 23X if X refers to the bits per channel."

Should "pixel" and "channel" be swapped here:? Maybe 23X should be 3X?

[McQ]

Should "pixel" and "channel" be swapped here:? Maybe 23X should be 3X?

It appears as if the superscripts aren't appearing correctly in your browser. I can certainly see how this would make things confusing

The 23X should be appearing as 2 raised to the power of 3X. I cannot show superscript/subscripts in this post, but this can also be written as 2^(3X)

PS: Hello Ian, and welcome to the forums!

PPS: what browser and version are you using? hopefully this will help me make the page more compatible...

[ijbrewst]

Thanks for the welcome - this is an excellent site.

My browser is Firefox Version 3.5.7. However, I think the problem was copying and pasting into the post. If I go back to the Tutorial, all is OK. I realised when posting I was probably misunderstanding the last sentence.

By the way, do camera manufacturers usually quote their sensor size in resulting pixels or in photosites?