BITMAP IMAGE

24 x 24 pixel grid

Bitmap images are also known as raster images. A bitmap image is divided into a grid of
picture elements called pixels. Each horizontal line in the image is called a scan line. The term
bitmap refers to how a given pattern of bits in a pixel maps at a specific location to a
specific color. When editing bitmap images, you edit pixels rather than objects or shapes.
Note: raster : formation consisting of the set of horizontal lines that is used to form an image on a CRT.
A pixel is the smallest addressable area or smallest solid block of colour in an image.

CHARACTERISTICS OF BITMAP
IMAGES

Each pixel has a binary code stored in computer memory.

A bitmap image depends on resolution - it contains a fixed number of pixels to

represent the image data (e.g. taken from a camera 640 x 480). As a result, a bitmap
image can lose detail and appear jagged if viewed at a high magnification or printed at
too low a resolution (aka pixellation).

Bitmap images are best for representing subtle gradations of shades and colour such
as in photographs. Bitmap images have a fixed resolution and cannot be resized
without losing image quality.

Bitmap images tend to have much larger file sizes than vector graphics and they are
often compressed to reduce their size.

Raster images are stored in image files with varying formats (tiff, jpg, bmp, png, gif, etc).

From Analogue to Digital image

Two steps are used:

Sampling
Quantization

Sampling of image
When measuring the value for a pixel, one takes the average color of an area around the
location of the pixel. A simplistic model is sampling a square, this is called a box filter. When
perceiving a bitmap image the human eye should blend the pixel values together, recreating an
illusion of the continuous image it represents.

QUANTIZATION (Binary code)

A 2D grey scale image using 8 bit code

for each pixel ( i.e. 1 byte for each pixel)

Quantization involves assigning a single value to each sample in such a way that the image reconstructed
from the quantized sample values are of good quality and the error introduced because of quantization is
small. The dynamic range of values that the samples of the image can assume is divided into a finite number
of intervals, and each interval is assigned a single level.

Grey Scale Image

Representation of an RGB Color Image

A color camera is based on the same principle as the human eye. That is, it measures the
amount of incoming red light, green light and blue light, respectively.
Color pixel = [Red, Green, Blue] = [R,G,B]

RESOLUTION
Resolution of a VDU screen or display resolution: a quantity expressed as the
number of pixels per row by the number of pixels per column (pixel dimensions). Some
typical resolutions are: 1024 x 768, 800 x 600, 640 x 480. This is due to aspect ratio (the
ratio of the physical picture width to the physical picture height) of 4: 3 or 16:9. The higher
the resolution, the greater the number of pixels for a given size of screen.
Resolution of an image is the quality of the image. As the resolution goes up, the image
becomes more clear. It becomes sharper, more defined, and more detailed as well. Why is
that? Because theres more information in the same small space. The most often used
measurement is ppi, pixels per inch. Resolution depends upon the size of pixel.
Smaller the size of pixel, higher will be the resolution and more clear will the object in image.
Image having smaller pixel size occupy more size on disk.

10 by 10 square

50 by 50 square

100 by 100 square

Effects of Resolution on Image Quality: As the resolution increases, the

gain in image quality levels off.

Image scaling is the process of resizing a digital image. With bitmap graphics, as
the size of an image is reduced or enlarged, the pixels which comprise the image become
increasingly visible, making the image appear "soft" if pixels are averaged, or jagged if not.

Scaling methods
One of the simpler ways of doubling its size is nearest-neighbor interpolation, replacing
every pixel with four pixels of the same color:

The resulting image is larger than the original, and preserves all the original detail, but has
undesirable jaggedness. The diagonal lines of the W, for example, now show the
characteristic "stairway" shape.
Better scaling methods are BILINEAR INTERPOLATION, BICUBIC
INTERPOLATION or ANTI-ALIASING
See: http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/image-interpolation.htm

Colour Depth
Colour depth, also known as bit depth, is the number of bits used to indicate the colour
or greyscale value of a single pixel in a bitmapped image. The colour of a single pixel can be
coded using the RGB colour model, which is Red, Green and blue to produce specific
colour.

1 bit, 2 bits, 3 bits, 4 bits, 5 bits and 6 bits colour depth used respectively)

Colour Depth

1- bit colour
A black and white image as a monochrome image. 1 bit is allocated to each pixel. 0 for black
and 1 for white.

12-bit direct colour

In 12 bit direct colour, 4 bits (24 or 16 possible levels) for each R,G and b components, enabling
4096 (16 x 16 x 16) different colours. This colour can be used in device with limited colour
display such as mobile phones

True colour
Produces 16.7 million distinct colours. The human eye can distinguish colours for most
photographic images. 24-bit true colour uses 8 bits for each Red, Green and Blue components
(256x 256 x 256).

32-bit colour
It is true colour with an extra 8 bits chosen because the word size of modern pc is 32 or 64
bits. The extra 8 bits are either ignored or used to represent an alpha channel, which is a way
of providing partial transparency.

BITMAP FILE CALCULATION

Suppose a bitmapped image size 8 pixels x 8 pixels uses 8 bits to encode the colour
of each pixel.
8 bits = 1 byte
Image Size is ( 8 x 8 x 1 byte) = 64 bytes
If 16 bits are used to encode with 4 bits for each Red, Blue and Green
Image size = (8 x 8 x 2 bytes) = 128 bytes

A screen with resolution 1024 x 768 and a colour depth of 32 bits

Memory needed is 1024 x 768 x 4 bytes = 3 MB
Actually the file space requirement will slightly greater because the resolution
and colour depth information must be saved at the beginning of the file header.

BMP File Header

BMP files have (1) a file header, (2) a bit map header,
(3) a color table, and (4) the image data. The file
header occupies the first 14 bytes of all BMP files.

VECTOR IMAGE

Vector images are made up of paths (mathematical equations) rather than pixels.
Objects may consist of circles, freeform, lines, ellipses, curves,
and shapes with editable attributes such as colour, fill, and outline.
The computer follows these paths to display the image.

A vector based graphic made up of points and paths

Vector-based graphics have been around for a long time. They are used in:
Illustration/drawing programs such as Macromedia Freehand and Adobe Illustrator.
3D applications such as CAD/CAM, architectural rendering, and animation.
TrueType fonts.
Charts and graphs in spreadsheet programs.

CHARACTERISTICS OF VECTOR
GRAPHICS INCLUDE:
1.Vector images are made up of key points and paths
that define the drawn shape. The encircled red spot
indicates the key points (blue dots) which are moved
to alter the shape.
2.Vector images are not restricted to a rectangular
shape like bitmaps. A vector image does not have
any background which allows overlapping of objects.
Vector objects can be placed over other objects, and
the object below will show through.
3.Vector images are resolution independent therefore scalable. Such images can be
easily resized, recolored, and reshaped without affecting its visual quality (colour,
detail, sharpness, etc). This is not the case with bitmap images.
4.Vector graphics formats, such as EPS,WMF, SVG, or VML.

Drawling list

Object information is recorded in a file. The file lists all the objects making up the
graphic with necessary information about each object as a list of drawing commands
the drawing list.

Properties of objects

To recreate a vector graphic, the properties of every object in the

drawing list must be specified. Properties or attributes are
position, size, direction (endpoint coordinates), line, thickness, font
size and typeface, shading, the mathematical description of the
curves, whether a closed shape is filled or not, the fill colour,
whether the closed shape has a border, the colour and thickness of
any border.

Adv and Disadv of bitmapped and

vector graphic images

Geometric images require fewer bytes in vector graphic format than in bitmapped
format

Images that have continuous areas of colour, such as photographic images, take up
fewer bytes in bitmapped format than in vector

Geometric images load faster from secondary storage and download faster over the
internet in vector format

Vector graphic images scale without distortion whereas bitmapped images do not.

Some vector graphic formats can be searched for a particular graphic objects which
may then be manipulated. It is much harder to do this in bitmapped graphics.

APPLICATIONS THAT HANDLES

IMAGES
There are several softwares that create bitmap graphics.

Microsoft Paint

PaintShop Pro

Adobe Photoshop

GIMP

For vector images:

Adobe illustrator

CorelDraw

Xara photo and graphic designer

Features of graphics programs

Drawing tools for lines, geometrical shapes and freeform objects.

Painting tools such as brush, pencil and airbrush for bitmap only.
Input from specialised hardware such as graphic tablets or MIDI device.
Separate layers to keep bitmap or vector images editable, to facilitate hiding or
locking parts the users work while they work on other parts to prevent unintended
editing or deletions.
Resize, rotate and flip tools.
Creation of animated graphics.
Exporting data in graphics file format other than program native format with
compression.
Selection tools including rectangle, rounded rectangle, ellipse, free and fuzzy.
Cropping tool for removing unwanted regions.
Adjustment and automatic correction of brightness, contrast ands colour.
Photo enhancement using image transformation tools such as shear distortion
correction and photo retouching with re eye removal, healing and clone (bitmap)
3D modelling (vector)

End