Deep Image Display with Quartz

Last Revision:	Version 1.0, 2012-04-04 Shows how specialized dithering improves the rendering of “deep” images (greater than 8-bpc) on OS X Lion.
Build Requirements:	Mac OS X 10.7 SDK or later
Runtime Requirements:	Mac OS X 10.7 or later

The “Deep Image Display with Quartz” sample shows how to take advantage of specialized dithering to improve the appearance of “deep” images (i.e. greater than 8-bits per color channel) drawn using Quartz.

When a window’s color depth limit is set to 64-bit (RGBA 16-16-16-16), a specialized dither pattern is automatically applied to the window’s content as it is composited into the 8-bits per color channel frame buffer. This dithering minimizes the appearance of quantization artifacts on screen.

For comparison purposes, the sample application shows a color gradient image in two windows. The left image shows a deep version of the image drawn using the above technique while the right shows a “standard” (8-bits per color channel) version.