What's Up

Issue #19
December 6th - 20th   1996

   The color depth of your video system is a bit more confusing. It has
to do with just how many different colors can be shown on the screen
at one time. If your video card uses a palette of 256 colors, each dot
can be stored as a choice of just this set; very much like one of those
paint-by-numbers pictures. This uses only one third as much video
memory as when each dot has all of its own color information, which
would allow you to see a picture with every dot of a unique color. Even
if you have a true color video card, you are limited as to which
combinations of screen resolution and color depth you can have by
the amount of video memory that is installed on your card. You can
see this by checking out your display settings in the Windows control
panel.

   So what!? What can you do with all of this? Well, since all of the
information that makes up a color picture is stored in your computer
as numbers, you can do all kinds of funky math on it. You can change
the brightness, contrast, and tint; much like on a TV. You can take
people out of one photograph and put them in an other. You can stretch
em', squish em', rotate em', and generally abuse em' for days. And
then, print them on a color inkjet printer. It is a very technical topic,
and requires much more reading than is provided here, but computer
graphics is a lot of fun, and can give you a near limitless outlet for your
natural creative abilities. It's color, sweetheart. Isn't that fabulous!

JL :o)

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