Re: 8 verses 16 bit

[Kennedy McEwen <rkm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In article <3C842BBE.53E34A0@uci.edu>, David Chien <chiendh@uci.edu> 
writes
>> >Human color vision studies easily show that the human eye can easily
>> >see more colors than what the 8-bit color range can support.
>> >
>> Please present some references for such human vision studies.
>
>> Without spoiling anyone's fun, I expect negative results - 8 bits is
>> more than adequate to reproduce all of the colours discernible to the
>> human eye under a fixed background level of illumination.
>
>  Perhaps a better expansion is that an 8-bit system can't adaquately
>capture scenes in real life which have a great variance in color and
>brightness?
>
That is certainly true - but you cannot reproduce those ranges of colour 
and density on any medium: because that has to be viewed at under or by 
a single level of illumination - where the dynamic range of the eye is 
limited to less than 8 bits because it operates with a FIXED pupil.
>
>  Of course, while studies have given figures for the human vision
>system at the hundreds of thousands to millions range, none have found
>the upper limit of human vision systems.  Either way, saying humans can
>see less or more than 8-bit color systems is up to debate.

Why - no studies have ever shown that human beings can discriminate more 
than 8-bits in each of the primary colours (and significantly less than 
this in blue, in particular).  There is no debate!
-- 
Kennedy
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed.
Python Philosophers
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