RGBA Color Space
RGBA stands for red green blue alpha. While it is sometimes described as a color space, it is actually simply a use of the RGB color model, with extra information. The color is RGB, and may belong to any RGB color space, but an integral alpha value as invented by Catmull and Smith between 1971 and 1972 enables Alpha compositing. The inventors named alpha after the Greek letter in the classic linear interpolation formula αA + (1-α)B.
The alpha channel is normally used as an opacity channel. If a pixel has a value of 0% in its alpha channel, it is fully transparent (and, thus, invisible), whereas a value of 100% in the alpha channel gives a fully opaque pixel (traditional digital images). Values between 0% and 100% make it possible for pixels to show through a background like a glass (translucency), an effect not possible with simple binary (transparent or opaque) transparency. It allows easy image compositing.
PNG is an image format that uses RGBA.
Read more about RGBA Color Space: ARGB, RGBA Hexadecimal
Famous quotes containing the words color and/or space:
“Rain falls into the open eyes of the dead
Again again with its pointless sound
When the moon finds them they are the color of everything”
—William Stanley Merwin (b. 1927)
“Here in the U.S., culture is not that delicious panacea which we Europeans consume in a sacramental mental space and which has its own special columns in the newspapers—and in people’s minds. Culture is space, speed, cinema, technology. This culture is authentic, if anything can be said to be authentic.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)