Bit depth is all about how much color information an image can hold. I think of it like a pack of crayons for each tiny dot in a picture. The more bits you have, the more crayons you get to color with. For example, a 1-bit image has a super small crayon pack with only two colors, like black and white. But a 24-bit image, which people call “True Color,” has a massive box with over 16.7 million colors! That’s why the top picture below looks so smooth and realistic. The catch is, the more colors an image has, the more data it needs, which makes the file size way bigger.

So, why would a website ever use an image with fewer colors, like the bottom one that looks kinda blocky and posterized? It really comes down to the speed in which the website loads. Nobody wants to sit around waiting for a huge image to load. If a website is fast, viewers are more likely to stick around, and even Google puts faster sites higher in search results.

When it comes to the psycological piece of it, wjen a website loads instantly, you just get a good vibe from it. You automatically think the company is efficient and professional. But if it’s slow and clunky, you get annoyed and might assume their whole business is disorganized. Our brains just prefer things that are fast and easy to process. Adding on, the retro look is actually on purpose sometimes. It can be a cool artistic style, especially if the brand has a vintage or oldschool theme. So it’s all about finding the right balance between a perfect-looking image and a website that’s actually fast and user friendly. Personally, I would want my own website to load fast, that is why I would include more of the second image.