It’s the year 2006. Almost everyone is using a 24 or 32-bit graphics card with a monitor capable of displaying the full range of colours that it will allow. Yet, many web designers are still optimizing images for their web sites to 8-bit colour. The question is, why?

A decade ago, 8-bit graphic cards were common. An 8-bit card can display 256 colours, while a 24 or 32-bit card can display 16.7 million colours. A 24-bit’s image quality is very poor when viewed through an 8-bit card. For this reason, web designers optimized their images to look their best for the 8-bit cards.

An 8-bit web image never used the full 256 colours available to it. Windows and Macs reserved 40 system colors, leaving 216 colours which were supposedly safe for viewing on any monitor. It’s claimed that these 216 colours will not dither (i.e. create the illusion of a colour by varying the patterns of pixels) on all platforms, but in reality, it will not dither on most monitors. Not all cards using these 8-bit palettes will perfectly render these web safe colours.

So do we really need to create 8-bit image for web sites (and software) for people who don’t have 24-bit graphic cards? You can buy a low end 24-bit card for around $40 today. Anyways, most computers have 24-bit (or higher) cards so they can display 16.7 million colours. There isn’t any need to optimize images for 8-bits unless you would like to continue supporting legacy technologies.

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