Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!bbn!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!cadre!pitt!cisunx!ejkst
From: ejkst@cisunx.UUCP (Eric J. Kennedy)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: amiga on a mac ii budget- the sequel
Message-ID: <11503@cisunx.UUCP>
Date: 3 Aug 88 21:35:06 GMT
References: <575@super.ORG> <3075@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM> <179@kesmai.COM> <6536@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Reply-To: ejkst@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu (Eric J. Kennedy)
Organization: Univ. of Pittsburgh, Comp & Info Sys
Lines: 36

In article <6536@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> cthulhu@athena.mit.edu (Jim Reich) writes:
>Really?  People keep talking about this, but I
>just can't understand why people need six trillion colors, except for
>bragging purposes.  I'll admit that easy access to 256 colors would be
>nice, but you just can't tell the difference with more.  Actually, I'm kind of
>curious as to why one would need 8 bits of color. Making a bar graph with 4097
>bars on it?  Can you really see the difference between a HAM smooth shade and
>an 8 bit smooth shade?!?!?!?  

Yes.  Try this sometime, if you own a ray tracing package.  Make a large
red slab, and place it at an angle to your field of view, with a light
shining down on it.

                     ---------------------------------
                    /                                 \
                   /                                   \
                  /                                     \
                 /                                       \
                /                                         \
               /                                           \
	       +--------------------------------------------+
	       |                                            |
	       +--------------------------------------------+


You will see distinctive bands of color across the slab as you go
further away from the light.  The reason is that in HAM mode, you only
have 15 shades of red to work with, and you _can_ see the difference
between them.  On a MAC II, you have, what, 256 shades of red to work
with?  (not sure about that, somebody correct me if I'm wrong.)


-- 
------------
Eric Kennedy
ejkst@cisunx.UUCP