Which Color (8 or 16 or 32-bit) mode to choose for websites mock-ups ?

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
November 12, 2016
2 replies
186391 views

I want to create a new website mock-up project in the newest Photoshop CC 2017 version, but since the welcome interface changed, I don't remember the colour mode settings from before. First I choose RGB colour mode of course, but then I can set as well 8-bit, 16-bit or 32-bit colours, but I am not sure which one to pick up for standard website PSD ??

Can someone explain what those 8-bit, 16-bit or 32-bit colours are for and when to choose 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit colour modes ??

Thank you for help.

Correct answer Per Berntsen

Use 8-bit.

You could start out in 16-bit if you are doing heavy editing to photographic images, and convert to 8-bit when you're done.

8-bit files have 256 levels (shades of color) per channel, whereas 16-bit has 65,536 levels, which gives you editing headroom.

32-bit is used for creating HDR (High Dynamic Range) images.

For more information, take a look at this article: What is a digital image?

Scroll down to Image modes, channels and bit depth

R

rebaxplosion

Participant

which one to use for creating images to print?

thx

Per Berntsen

Community Expert

8-bit is normally used for printing, although some printer drivers allow printing 16-bit files. I have no experience with 16-bit printing, but a quick internet search seems to indicate that it doesn't offer any advantage over 8-bit.

The important thing is that you start out in 16-bit, and then convert (a copy) to 8-bit for printing when you have finished editing.

Abambo

Community Expert

16 bits is for editing. Rounding errors accumulate less when doing corrections. The problem here are repeated adjustments that need more accuracy. For printing, 8 bits is more then enough. Even 6 bits would produce quite the same result, except when printing really high quality prints on very special paper with very advanced printers.

ABAMBO | Hard- and Software Engineer | Photographer