Colors, Pure and Dithered

The human eye is capable of distinguishing millions of different colors. However, some video cards and some video modes are only capable of displaying a limited number of colors. For example, a standard VGA card can only display 16 colors.

Dithered Colors. When you run Windows in a mode that has a limited number of colors, Windows uses a process called dithering to create the extra colors it needs. Dithering mixes the dots of two different colors to get a new color. From a distance, dithered colors look like a pure color but they are really a mixture of two colors.

Drawing Lines. Unfortunately, lines can only be drawn using pure colors. This means that when the Viewer draws cave lines, it can only use pure colors. As a result, the number of colors that can be used to draw lines is limited by the video mode. If you want to use a broad range of colors, you must use a color mode that supports a large number of colors. For more information, see the discussion on 24-color mode.

Note: This section may be obsolete. It was written back when computers were much less powerful. Modern computers and operating systems have no trouble handling large numbers of colors.