As of 2019, the most common image colorspace in computing is the [[RGB color model]] with 8 bits per pixel [[color depth]]. ThisUsing meansthis thattechnique, 8 bits are used to describe the [[luminance]] level in each of the [[RGB channel]]s, therefore 24 bits of storage (in either RAM or in persistent storage) are necessary to fully describe the color of each pixel. The objective of the usage of palettes is to lower this storage requirement by reducing the set of possible colors that are to be handled at once. In doing so, each possible color is assigned an index. A common example is the 256-color palette commonly used in the [[GIF]] file format, in which 256 colors to be used to represent an image are selected from the whole 24 bpp color space (often using adaptive methods), each being assigned an 8 bit index. In this way, while the system can arbitrarily reproduce any color in the RGB color space (as long as the 256 color restriction allows), the storage requirement per pixel is lowered from 24 to 8 bits per pixel.
