
28 Chapter 2 Digital Data
four. Browns and greens must be quantized to grey or black. Gone, too, are the various
shades of blue in the sky.
Using codes with more bits, that is increasing the sample resolution, counters the
effects of quantization. The 16.7 million distinct encodings of 24-bit sample resolution
make it possible to assign a different code to every shade of color humans can distin-
guish. This produces images that rival the quality of 35mm analog photos.
Sample Rate
The second major factor determining the quality of digital images and sounds is sample
rate. Sample rate is the number of samples taken in a given unit of time ...