Color depth or colour depth (see spelling differences), also known as bit depth, is either the number of bits used to indicate the color of a single pixel, in a bitmapped image or video frame buffer, or the number of bits used for each color component of a single pixel. A typical computer monitor and video card may offer 8 bits of color precision (256 output levels) per R/G/B color channel, for an overall 24-bit color space (or 32-bit space, with alpha transparency bits, which have little bearing on the color precision), though earlier standards offered 6 bits per channel (64 levels) or less. (
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