Effective RGB

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Effective RGB is a concept of approaching RGB colour spacing in a way that maximises the use of integers sized to a power of two. In this sense it is a rejection of 8 bit-per-channel "true colour" on the grounds of utility: in applications where perceptive fidelity is not crucial, such as user interfaces and some consumer software, 5 bit-per-channel high colour is the more appropriate choice; otherwise, it is best to jump all the way to 10 bit-per-channel deep colour and use the appropriate hardware for servicing that amount of colour information.

Beyond deep colour

It is possible that some applications may have cause to use more than 10 bits per RGB channel for storing colour information. To this end, I have coined the terms far colour to refer to a 21 bit-per-channel RGB colour space that fits inside a 64-bit integer with 1 bit to spare, and strange colour to refer to a 42 bit-per-channel RGB colour space that fits inside a 128-bit integer with 2 bits to spare.