alice-teacher question regarding bits!

[Sandy Graham]

The book I just started has this question:

“If a picture was made up of 64 possible colors, how many bits would be needed to store each pixel of the picture?”

I thought RGB values would be required so was trying to figure out an answer from that (though the book doesn’t give much information on how to do that exactly), but the answer key says the answer is 6. I can see that 2^6 = 64 and assume that’s where the 6 came from, but why is that the answer? How does 6 bits yield 64 possible colors? Don’t RGB values have to be considered?

Thanks! I didn’t know where else I could get a reliable answer to this!

Your sister in Christ,

 

Sandy Graham

 

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