$I = 22$ becomes bluer by 0.5 magnitudes, from $V-I = 2.3$ to $V-I = 1.8.$ This strongly suggests that most of the bluer bright giants appearing in the ground-based CM diagrams of this region are in fact blends of fainter stars.

The existence of the [*infrared*]{}-luminous AGB stars found by Freedman (1992) and Elston & Silva (1992) using [*J*]{} and [*K*]{} photometry appears to be compatible with our observations, although we cannot identify them uniquely with $V$ and $I$ alone. Freedman finds 125 stars with $K<18$ in a $100''\times40''$ field at similar distance from the nucleus as our [*HST*]{} observations; 85 of these $K$-bright stars are also detected in $J.$ Given our smaller image area, we would expect to have $\sim35$ stars with $K<18$ in our PC observations, with half of these having $K<17.$ Most of these stars have $J-K>1.1,$ and would thus be expected to have $I-K>3.5$ if the Milky Way bulge giants of Frogel & Whitford (1987) can be used as a guide. We would conclude that most of the $K$-bright stars thus have $I>20,$ placing them comfortably below the bright tip of our $I$-band luminosity function. The Frogel & Whitford giants further show little correlation between 