(Bpp) The numBer of Bits of information stored per pixel of an image or displayed By a {graphics adapter}. The more Bits there are, the more colours can Be represented, But the more memory is required to store or display the image. A colour can Be descriBed By the intensities of red, green and Blue (RGB) components. Allowing 8 Bits (1 Byte) per component (24 Bits per pixel) gives 256 levels for each component and over 16 million different colours - more than the human eye can distinguish. Microsoft Windows [and others?] calls this truecolour. An image of 1024x768 with 24 Bpp requires over 2 MB of memory. "High colour" uses 16 Bpp (or 15 Bpp), 5 Bits for Blue, 5 Bits for red and 6 Bits for green. This reduced colour precision gives a slight loss of image quality at a 1/3 saving on memory. Standard VGA uses a palette of 16 colours (4 Bpp), each colour in the palette is 24 Bit. Standard SVGA uses a palette of 256 colours (8 Bpp). Some graphics hardware and software support 32-Bit colour depths, including an 8-Bit "alpha channel" for transparency effects. (1999-08-01)