re million vs thousand colors andrey cco caltech edu andre t yew writes d hh dtek chalmers se henrik harmsen writes bits per r g b gives horrible machbanding visible in almost any picture bits per r g b colors gives visible machbanding color gradient picture has almost no machbanding this color resolution is see some small machbanding on the smooth color gradient picture but all in all there are situiations where you get visible mach banding even in a bit card if you create a very smooth color gradient of dark green white yellow or something and turn up the contrast on the monitor you will probably see some mach banding while i don t mean to damn henrik s attempt to be helpful here he s using a common misconception that should be corrected mach banding will occur for any image it is not the color quantization you see when you don t have enough bits it is the human eye s response to transitions or edges between intensities the result is that colors near the transistion look brighter on the brighter side and darker on the darker side andre yeah of course the term mach banding was not the correct one it should ve been color quantization effect although a bad color quantization effect could result in some visible mach bands on a picture that was smooth before it was quantizised henrik harmsen internet d hh dtek chalmers se chalmers university of technology sweden i haven t lost my mind it s backed up on tape somewhere
