Therefore, a 4:2:2 image only retains a half of the chroma samples that a 4:4:4 image does. And the third 2 means two chroma subsampling in the second row, too. The second 2 means two chroma subsampling in the first row. Technically speaking, 4:4:4 represents each pixel has its’ own color value which includes all the chroma information, so it isn’t chroma subsampling. The second 4 means 4 colors yield in the first row of chroma sampling, and the third 4, again, means 4 colors yield in the second row of chroma sampling. The first 4 represents the number of pixels across we are subsampling. The chroma signals can be compressed for saving the amounts of data loading. Cb and Cr are the two chroma signals which share 2/3 amount of signal.
The brightness signal is always retained without compressing. Y refers to the brightness of the pixel and shares 1/3 the amount of signal. YCbCr is a family of color spaces used as a part of the color image pipeline in video and digital photography systems. Also, study indicates that human eyes are more sensitive to light or luminance than colors. Without the chrominance components, the luma of each pixel produces a greyscale representation of the image. The image pixel is defined by luma and chrominance components.
Have you ever wondered how does chroma subsampling affects the colors of the image? And what exactly do these numbers 4:4:4, 4:2:2 and 4:2:0 mean?īefore we dive into chroma subsampling, let’s first talk about the image pixel.
We often see numbers 4:4:4, 4:2:2 and 4:2:0 on recording devices and these are known as chroma subsampling. What are chroma sampling and the numbers 4:4:4, 4:2:2 and 4:2:0? What is more shocking is that a 12-bit system is able to produce a whopping 4096 x 4096 x 4096 = 68,719,476,736 colors! As a result, increasing the color depth will enable you to better represent your colors. In a 10-bit system, you can produce 1024 x 1024 x 1024 = 1,073,741,824 colors which is 64 times of the colors of the 8-bit. This may look humungous, but when it compared to 10 bit, this is actually nothing. This means that each of the RGB channels has 256 shades so there are 256x256x256 or 16,777,216 colors in total in this 8-bit RGB system.Īn 8-bit color system is capable of producing over 16 million colors. The number, 256, is 2 raised to the 8th power or the 8-bit color depth. If you know binary system well enough, this number 256 should sound very familiar to you. In most RGB systems, there are 256 shades per color channel. What is 8-bit, 10-bit and 12-bit color depth?Ĭolor depth is also known as bit-depth which refers to the number of bits used to define the color channels, red, green or blue, for each pixel. What exactly do these numbers mean and how they affect the image quality and colors? We will answer all of your questions in this article. Sometimes you also find the numbers like 4:4:4, 4:2:2 and 4:2:0 on recording devices. When it comes to digital video production, we often see 8-bit, 10-bit or even 12-bit presenting the spec of image processing.