All hail the power of 2... when making computers, it is often most efficient to settle on doing things at some power of 2. Hence 8, then 16, then 32, soon 64 bit processors in personal computers. Graphics cards working at 64, 128, then 256 bits at a time. You can bet the next gen will be 512 bits, not 400 or 800, because ... well, it's technical.
Point being, we work in 32 bit chunks, but that's not quite the color space we're using. 32 bit color is pretty well synonymous with 24 bit color, or 8bit R G and B. The other 8 bits are kinda tacked on, and it has become convention to use them as an alpha channel for transparency. So 32 bit is often (like in OS X) 8 bit R G B and Alpha.
24 bit color has been "broadcast standard" for many years. We're not going above that in any hurry, there are bigger fish to fry. While scanners go above this, that's usually temporary, and the images you deal with are quickly converted to appropriate 24 bit values.
So for those keeping count, 24 bit is ~16 million colors, 32 bit just gives each of those colors 256 possible levels of opacity. (opaqueness) it's still only millions of colors. 16 bit is ~65000 colors. 8 bit is 256 colors. 4 bit is a sad joke on mankind, 2 bit is an original 3com Palm Pilot, and 1 bit is a black and white mask.
This was already addressed, but it was asked again, and I'm all about making sure people have a proper education.
Point being, we work in 32 bit chunks, but that's not quite the color space we're using. 32 bit color is pretty well synonymous with 24 bit color, or 8bit R G and B. The other 8 bits are kinda tacked on, and it has become convention to use them as an alpha channel for transparency. So 32 bit is often (like in OS X) 8 bit R G B and Alpha.
24 bit color has been "broadcast standard" for many years. We're not going above that in any hurry, there are bigger fish to fry. While scanners go above this, that's usually temporary, and the images you deal with are quickly converted to appropriate 24 bit values.
So for those keeping count, 24 bit is ~16 million colors, 32 bit just gives each of those colors 256 possible levels of opacity. (opaqueness) it's still only millions of colors. 16 bit is ~65000 colors. 8 bit is 256 colors. 4 bit is a sad joke on mankind, 2 bit is an original 3com Palm Pilot, and 1 bit is a black and white mask.
This was already addressed, but it was asked again, and I'm all about making sure people have a proper education.
