Color palette limited to 256 hues—each pixel references an index rather than storing full RGB values. Saves memory but causes banding in gradients.
When working with digital imagery, Indexed Color is most often encountered when dealing with older formats or when optimizing for web delivery. Instead of storing each pixel as a full RGB value (8 bits per channel, totaling 24 bits of color depth), Indexed Color references a color table—a palette of a maximum of 256 hues. Each pixel stores only an index, a number between 0 and 255, which points to the corresponding color in this table. This dramatically reduces storage requirements: instead of 3 bytes per pixel, only 1 byte is needed.
In practical workflows on set or in post-production, you will primarily encounter Indexed Color when working with older file formats—GIF, PNG-8, or certain DPX variants from the 1990s and early 2000s. Some VFX software uses Indexed Color internally as an intermediate layer for faster render times or for specific rotoscope and matte operations. The advantage is obvious: the file size is small, and processing is fast. The disadvantage is just as clear—you get posterization and color banding in areas with fine color gradients. A blue sky with a gradient becomes a staircase of color blocks, and skin transitions appear flat and artificial.
When working with modern 8-bit or 10-bit imagery, you will rarely make an active decision to use Indexed Color. However, it is worthwhile to know that a palette can be optimized—using color quantization algorithms that extract the 256 most frequent or important colors from the original. This minimizes visible quality loss. Some compositing packages offer such optimizations. In the VFX pipeline, you may sometimes encounter Indexed Color when working with legacy footage or when you need to deliver for broadcast with strict bandwidth specifications.
For modern cinema production, Indexed Color is irrelevant—you need at least 10-bit or preferably 16-bit color depth for color grading and final output. However, anyone dealing with historical film digitization, archive transfers, or web optimization should understand how the palette works and where the quality trap lies.