What do I do if a program requires 16 bit color?

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Summary: Some graphics intensive games may be written to require your video be set to 16 bit color. If you're running something else, it's an easy change.

I'm downloading a game, and it's failed to download because I have 24 bit color and it requires 16 bit color. Should I take the game back or can i change it and is it wise to change it?

First, I'm certain that it downloaded just fine. A download won't fail simply because of your color settings.

What it probably did was fail to install, which is what happens after the download completes.

There are a few different ways to handle this without resorting to returning the game.

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Let me start by explaining just what 16 bit versus 24 bit color means.

Your screen is made up of dots or "pixels". If you have, for example, a 1024 by 768 screen, that means it's 1024 pixels wide by 768 pixel's high for a total of 786,432 pixels total.

Each pixel can be set to a different color. How many different colors are available for each pixel to be set to is a function of the screen and video adapter abilities. Very old monitors could handle just black or white - two colors, so the pixels would be assigned either a 0 or a 1 to be on or off. Next to come along in the PC world was 16 colors, or a number between 0 and 15. Then came 256 colors, 65,536 colors, and the currently popular 16,777,216 colors.

The "bits" we talk about are the number of bits required to represent those numbers:

• 1 bit color: 0 or 1, hence back and white.

• 4 bit color: 0-15, or 16 colors.

• 8 bit color: 0-255 or 256 colors.

• 16 bit color: 0-65535, or 65,536 colors.

• 24 bit color: 0-1677215 or 16,777,216 colors.

The "down side", if you want to call it that, is that with increased color depth, as it's called, comes increased memory requirements. With 1 bit color, that 1024x768 screen can theoretically be represented in just under 100 kilobytes. In 24 bit color that balloons to around 2.5 megabytes.

That impacts not just storage, but actual processing requirements as applications try to manipulate images on the screen.

Applications like games.

For most people, the difference between 16 bit color and 24 bit is visually almost imperceptible. Certainly for many types of games even if it were noticeable, it might be considered unimportant. Hence, designing a game to require 16 bit color instead of 24 bit color might well make that game easier to create and faster to play.

There are two viable solutions:

• Change your system color depth to 16 bits. As I said it's likely you won't even notice the difference.

  In Windows XP, right click on the desktop and click on Properties, then the Settings tab. In the "Color quality" dropdown, select 16 bit and click OK. That's all there is to it.

• Adjust the shortcut that starts the program to automatically switch to 16 color mode. I've detailed how to do this in an earlier article: Why does my screen resolution change when I run this program?. In that article it was happening accidentally, but in this case you'll alter the setting on purpose.

In either case, the color requirements of your game should no longer be an issue.

Related:

• Why don't more websites fit in an 800x600 screen resolution? Websites often have problems displaying in smaller windows, and 800x600 is increasingly considered to be small. There are a couple of things to try.

• Do I need digital video output for my LCD monitor? Depending on what you're doing, you may or may not need digital video output for your LCD monitor.

• Why do web pictures look blocky on my computer, but not on someone else's? Some techniques used to speed up your web surfing experience can do so at the cost of image quality. We'll look at how, why and what you might do.

Article C3584 - December 6, 2008