1-Bit, 8-Bit Grayscale, 16-Bit Grayscale
When you scan in black and white or grayscale, Colortrac wide format scanners scan in 16-bit grayscale. This means that they capture over 65,000 shades of gray.
The 65,000 shades of gray are then reduced down to two to create a black and white image (called 1-bit) or to 256 to create an 8-bit grayscale image.
Scanning in 16-bit grayscale then reducing to 8-bit grayscale improves shadow and highlight detail in 8-bit grayscale images.
