Graphic Design Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for Graphic Design professionals, students, and enthusiasts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I am wondering when creating a new document in Photoshop about the color mode options. If you choose RGB Color there's another option via a drop-down which you can chose 16bit.
When I create a 1300px × 5000px 16bit document and save, the file size is already 32mb compared to 371kb with an 8bit document.
Why is there such a difference in file size and what is the use of 16bit vs 8bit?
16 bit color uses double the amount of memory for color information than standard color. This means that instead of getting:
you get:
This is obviously much more precise in terms of color resolution. As for wether you need it read:
Basically if you do heavy (many) color manipulations and/or your source is more than 8- bit it does make a difference.
PS: 16 bits is a bit restrictive on what image formats you can use. There are not many good compressed formats for 16- bit and the higher bitdepths/floats. As they are not delivery formats but rather master stores for people with reason to do so because they make money out of the extra quality.
