What is a bitmap image?
A bitmap image is a digital image made up of a rectangular grid of tiny colored squares called pixels. Each pixel stores the exact color value.
What is a pixel?
A pixel (short for 'picture element') is the smallest unit of a bitmap image, a tiny square that has a single color.
How do bitmap images differ from vector graphics?
Bitmap images store the exact color of each pixel, while vector graphics use mathematical formulas to describe shapes and lines. Bitmaps are ideal for photographs and complex images.
What are the two main characteristics of a raster image?
The two main characteristics are dimensions (width and height in pixels) and color depth (the number of bits per pixel).
What is color depth?
Color depth is the number of bits used to represent the color of each pixel. It determines how many distinct colors an image can have.
How many colors can be represented with 24-bit color depth?
24-bit color depth can represent over 16 million distinct colors (224 = 16,777,216).
In 24-bit color, how many bits are used for each of the red, green, and blue channels?
8 bits are used for each channel, giving values from 0 to 255 for red, green, and blue.
What is resolution in a bitmap image?
Resolution refers to the number of pixels in the image, typically given as width × height. It can also refer to the size of each pixel (support).
How does increasing color depth affect file size?
Increasing color depth increases the number of bits per pixel, so the file size increases proportionally.
How does increasing resolution affect file size?
Increasing resolution increases the total number of pixels, which increases the file size.
How do you estimate the file size of an uncompressed bitmap image?
Multiply the width by the height to get the total number of pixels, then multiply by the number of bits per pixel (color depth), and divide by 8 to get bytes.
What is the origin of the word 'raster'?
The word 'raster' comes from the Latin 'rastrum' (a rake), derived from 'radere' (to scrape). It originated from the raster scan of CRT monitors.
What is a common pixel format for full-color images?
Full-color images typically use 24 bits per pixel, with 8 bits for each of red, green, and blue channels.
What is a binary pixel format?
A binary pixel format uses 1 bit per pixel, so each pixel is either black or white.
What is a grayscale pixel format?
A grayscale pixel format uses multiple bits per pixel to represent shades of gray, typically 8 bits giving 256 shades.
What is a palettized pixel format?
A palettized image uses a color lookup table (palette) where each pixel value is an index into the table, allowing a limited number of colors.
What is row-major order in storing bitmap data?
Row-major order stores the pixels row by row, listing the cells of the top row left to right, then the second row, and so on.
What information must a bitmap file header contain?
The header must contain at least the number of columns (width) and the pixel datatype (bits per pixel) so the reader knows where each value ends.
What is run-length encoding (RLE)?
RLE is a lossless compression method that replaces repeated values with the value and the number of times it appears. It works well for images with large areas of identical colors.
What is lossless compression?
Lossless compression allows the original pixel values to be perfectly regenerated from the compressed data. Examples include RLE and LZW.
What is lossy compression?
Lossy compression approximates the original pixel values, so the decompressed image is not exactly the same. JPEG is a common lossy format.
Why are photographs usually stored as raster images?
Photographs have complex colors and details that are best represented by storing the exact color of each pixel, which is what raster images do.
What is a common raster file format used on the web?
Common raster formats include GIF, JPEG, and PNG.