Changing image color depth

The main requirement the user may have for the web graphics is to have them load fast and look good representing all the image colors in their full blossom. In order to achieve this, one needs to compress the image choosing the image format that will allow the highest possible image quality. Another requirement is to be able to control color depth of the image. Color depth allows choosing the number of colors every pixel will display. Grayscale images can use as many as 256 colors (also called 8-bit color) to define all the shades of gray. 65,500 colors (16-bit color) or 16.8 million colors (24-bit True Color) will provide significantly more color depth and help retain the original photograph’s qualities. Indexed images have only an 8-bit color depth. They are composed from a color palette that contains a maximum of only 256 colors. Grayscale images are 8-bit files that have 256 increments between black and white. The higher the color depth – the more real the image will look like. To control the color of each pixel in a screen, the OS should dedicate some memory to each pixel. ImageConverter Plus can increase or decrease the color depth of some image formats that allow this option: BMP , JPEG, PNG,TGA, etc. Still, you should note that color depth does not have much to do with the image quality and is tied together with the image dpi.