Is a 36 bit depth JPEG better than a 24 bit depth JPEG? How and why?

Question

A digital camera shoots JPEG format at 36 bit depth and with 12 bit depth for the R, G, and B into one picture. Another camera shoots a simple 24 bit depth RGB photo. Which one is better and why.

Answer 1

more bits is better... inside your camera you have millions of pixels some are filtered to only catch red... In a 24 bit jpeg that translates into 8 bits for the red it would only be able to register 256 different levels of red... in a 36 bit jpeg the red channel (pixel) would have 12 bits for red or 4096 different levels of red... that hold for the other green and blue colors as well... so ask yourself if you prefer a picture made up of 256 or 4096 levels of each color... The 36 bit is better... the only downside is in processing of it which will result in larger files.

Answer 2

Sorry, but there's no such thing as a 36 bit JPEG.

But there is a 36 or 48 bit tiff and a few other formats go that high too.

The camera that shoots 36 bit doesn't save them as jpegs. It saves them as either Tiffs or RAW files. If it does save as JPEG, then the 36 is converted to 24 beforehand. There would be no difference that you could see.

As far as there being a difference when editing images, then yes, there's a heck of a lot of difference. If you wanted to extract shadow detail from an image, you can easily do it with a 36 bit image but you wont have much luck with a 24bit image. There are too many 'gaps' between each level where there aren't many bits.

Answer 3

More bits usually means a larger gamut (greater range) of color. In practical terms, it can mean more accurate colors when the image is displayed.

But, not always. RGB, for example, is, roughly, the same gamut used by the human eye, and in television and computer monitors.

However, print processes can't work in RGB because it is a "subtractive" gamut, meaning that a color is reproduced by subtracting wavelengths from white, visible light. Most printing process use the four colors of cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK) which ADDS and mixes these pigments to produce specific colors. (some printers add other colors for a greater gamut, to help reproduce more accurate color. The CMYK gamut is limited and can only approximate colors. In a computer monitor, or other digital display, more bits means that more colors are available. The eye can't always tell the difference, and, when it comes time to print, even RGB has to be converted to CMYK.

Answer 4

In PhotoShop, you'd choose Image>Mode> but your choices are 8, 16, and 32.