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

[ales44]

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.

[Per Berntsen · Accepted solution]

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

[Joe_Conlin]

Flipping love clear, succinct answers. Thank you for this...

[rebaxplosion]

which one to use for creating images to print?

thx

[Per Berntsen]

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]

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.