Who needs 24 bit colors

[Gary Tarolli]

In my last posting, when I was talking about dithering 24 bit colors,
I forgot to mention that what I was implying was that you iterate 
R,G,B using at least 12 bits (preferably a lot more) and then dither
down to 8 bits each.  I didn't mean taking a 24 bit image and then
dither it to 24 bits - this is a nop since the source picture has no
more info than the dest. picture.  Or you could take a 36 bit RGB image
and reduce it to 24 using dithering.  In either case you will lose a 
little spatial resolution, but like I said before, because of the number
of colors you have to choose from, its probably better to dither than
not dither.  Even if you had a full 36 bit video backend with 12 bit DACs
etc., you could iterate colors at 16 bits per component and then dither
them down to 12 bits.  I think the end result will be an improvement!

Unfortunately, I don't have the softare in place to simulate this, so
I won't be posting any pictures.  Maybe someone else can?

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	Gary Tarolli