Quoth Markus Teich: > 8bit per component are sufficient for the human eye. This leads to 2 ^ (3*8) = > 16.777.216 colors. Can you differentiate any pair of them I would show you?
For some domains it's useful to preserve more detail than the eye can differentiate, so that different image enhancement or modification processes can work better. Like with audio; 44kHz is about the limit of human differentiation, but 96 / 128kHz is better for working with it, say for remixing.
