Maximum number of colors & maximum depth possible

Question

What is maximum number of colors possible for a picture?

What is the maximum depth?

Answer 1

I'm assuming you're asking about an image using the RGB color model.

There are multiple different color depths used - 8-bit (2^24 possible colors, but only 2^8 may be actually used on the image), 16-bit (2^15 or 2^16 possible colors, depending on the implementation in question), 24-bit (2^24 possible colors) and some devices may very well use 48-bit depth (2^48 possible colors).

Today, 24-bit color is considered standard for most image formats, and is commonly expanded into 32-bit ARGB or RGBA.