Palette Formats

Most of the time NerdConsole operates in true 24-bit RGB888 color. There is one special graphics mode that trades that for 12-bit RGB444 color for the purposes of packing even more colors onto the screen.

RGB888

This format takes 3 bytes of data per color granting access to 16,777,216 possible colors.

Bit	7	6	5	4	3	2	1	0
Byte 0	R	R	R	R	R	R	R	R
Byte 1	G	G	G	G	G	G	G	G
Byte 2	B	B	B	B	B	B	B	B

R=Red | G=Green | B=Blue

RGB444

This format takes 1.5 bytes of data per color granting access to 4,096 possible colors. This format interleaves 2 colors for every three bytes of palette data.

Bit	7	6	5	4	3	2	1	0
Byte 0	R	R	R	R	G	G	G	G
Byte 1	B	B	B	B	R	R	R	R
Byte 1	G	G	G	G	B	B	B	B

R=Red | G=Green | B=Blue

RGB565

Some bitmapped graphics mode use the RGB565 mode to reduce the number of bytes needed per pixel to 2 while still providing 65,536 colors. Human eyes can see varying levels of green better than red or blue, so the extra bit is used for green.

Bit	7	6	5	4	3	2	1	0
Byte 0	R	R	R	R	R	G	G	G
Byte 1	G	G	G	B	B	B	B	B

R=Red | G=Green | B=Blue