More about Color Bits
In digital media, colors are defined by groups of 1's and 0's. Early color standards back in the 1980's were 8-bit, which allowed the computer to display 256 different colors. Our eyes can distinguish millions of colors, so computer graphics seemed a bit garish with such a limited palette, although some artists worked well with the 8-bit limitation. With the advance of graphics cards, the modern standard for color standards grew to 24-bit "True Color". The 24 bits of information are ordered as RRRRRRRR GGGGGGGG BBBBBBBB where the R's make up the red value, G's are green, and B's are blue. Each of these values are either 1 (on) or 0 (off). Setting R to 1 means that a red-colored light is on. The values are determined by the bits added together using binary notation. For example a Red value of "11111111" is 255 (bright red), "00001111" is 15 (a dark red), and "00000000" is 0 (no red at all).
The final color is set by additively mixing all three colored light values. To make white, you'd switch all bits of all colors on (1111111 1111111 1111111). To make black, you'd turn them all off (00000000 00000000 00000000). For a nice green, you would turn on most of the greens and one of the reds (00001000 01111111 00000000). Note that in this system, the first bit has the greatest influence over the resulting color, because it represents either 128 or 0. We expect these first ones to sell first, they are like the seats in an airplane with extra legroom. The last bit only has the value 0 or 1, so it makes a very subtle change to the resulting color. We think that purists with calibrated monitors will want to buy those.
