Color shift question

[okuma 64]

8 bit has 256 colors and 16 bit has 65,536 colors.

 

Or for every 8 bit color there are 255 16 bit shades (65536/256)

 

Now if we have a 16 bit image, many of the pixels will lie on 16 bit shades and not on 8 bit colors.

 

If you convert the image to 8 bit, will some of the 16 bit shades jump tp 8 bit or will only those lying on 8 bit colors surrive?

 

Or in other words will you get a color shift or just a loss in converting from 16 to 8 bit image?

[herbko 0]

I think you may be confusing the 8-bit color graphic scheme with the 8 bits per channel format of common photo encoding like JPEG. For display and print, 8 bits per channel is enough. I'm not aware of any display or print devices that are much better than that. 16 bits per channel is better when you are adjusting the image. After the final adjustments are done, you shouldn't see a difference in converting to 8-bits.