Question

In the early days of the internet, images and GIFs were usually 120 by 50 pixels. A pixel was saved by its Red, Green, and Blue (RGB) values, each of which is an integer from 0 to 255.

1. A GIF image typically uses 8 bits to represent each color component (Red, Green, and Blue). How many distinct colors can be represented by a single pixel with 8 bits for each color component?

2. If an image has a resolution of 120 by 50 pixels, how many distinct images can be created using these colors?

Answer 1

A single pixel with 8 bits for each RGB component can represent 16,777,216 distinct colors. With a resolution of 120 by 50 pixels, the amount of distinct images that can be created using these colors is 16,777,216 raised to the power of 6000.

Step-by-step explanation:

To answer the first part of your question regarding the distinct colors that can be represented by a single pixel with 8 bits for each color component: A single pixel uses 8 bits to represent each of the three components of color in the RGB model: Red, Green, and Blue. Since each bit has two possible values (0 or 1), an 8-bit number can have 28 or 256 different values. Therefore, for each color component, you can have 256 different intensities. When you combine the three color components, the total number of distinct colors that can be represented by a single pixel is 256 x 256 x 256, which equals 16,777,216 distinct colors.

For the second part of your question: If an image has a resolution of 120 by 50 pixels, each pixel can be one of the 16,777,216 colors. To find the number of distinct images that can be created, you would compute 16,777,2166000, which is an incredibly large number, far too vast to enumerate or comprehend in a practical sense.