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Technology Stocks : 3DFX -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Patrick Grinsell who wrote (7337)	9/17/1998 12:05:00 PM
From: Michael Linov	Respond to of 16960

Scanners are a different matter. They scan in 32 bit (well, again, usually more like 30 bits... that 10 bits per a/d converter). This information is then resampled to 24 bits which effectively reduces the 1 bit noise artifacts to 1/2 a bit. Note that all the DAC's (digital to analog converters) used by video cards are all 3x8 bit (24 bit max). Also note that not all displays can display 24 bit color. Case in point, most LCD panels can only display 15 bit color (with 18 bit being the high-end). thats 32 shades of gray. If you want to test this out, set your video card to 24 bit mode. Then load MSPAINT and create a few shades of gray... ie: 15 15 15 , 16 16 16 etc. Draw a box using each color overlapping each other. If you can see the diffrence between the boxes, at 1 , its 24 bit, 2 21 bit, 4 18 bit, and 8 15 bit.

To: Patrick Grinsell who wrote (7337)	9/17/1998 1:18:00 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Respond to of 16960

OT -- P.S. Mike, how come my scanner has 32 bit? No alpha channel used there. Mike has already answered this. Since I do image processing as a hobby (and yes I go to dentist for fun) I can add to Mike's answer. When dealing with an analog source (eg. a photograph), you always want to have as many bits as you can. You will discard the bits if you don't need them. The high end scanners are all 48 Bit and I think there is talk of some 64 bit ones as well. You don't actually see the difference in the image when looking at it on the screen; you fish for that difference using various tools in the shadows and extream highlights. Difference = Information = the ability to manipulate the image. Once you are done with all your image manipulations, you save your image with as few bits and as little resolution as you can get away with. I assure you that the difference between two 16 bit images at the same resolution where one was scaled down from 32 bits and the other is native 16 bit is noticeable. Sun Tzu