Basic Computing

What are pixels? Depth, multiples and more

When you get closer to see an image up close, it changes and you see small squares, these are called “pixels”. In this article, we will explain in detail what are pixels. what is pixel size

What are pixels? what is pixel size

what is pixel size
what is pixel size

When you bring your sight closer to the screen of a television or a computer, the image that you could see clear and sharp from afar, now became small frames, these frames are called pixels, and they cannot be observed in a simple way.

What exactly are pixels? They are small homogeneous units of colors, these are what make up a digital image. You can see them more clearly when you enlarge an image or photograph on a computer monitor. what is pixel size

From this same sense comes the word, formed by the English word pix, which is the colloquial expression of picture (image) and element (element). Pixels are the elements that make up a digital image.

The pixels are made up of three different colors: blue, green and red, but when we mix them with different intensities, we have as a result, all the other colors, this will give us the image we see on the screen. It is possible to observe that the pixels, seen closely, allow the creation of an image.

Its history dates back to the early 30’s when the concept began to be used in the cinema, although it is also understood as the smaller cell that makes up the complex system of a digital image. This idea was coined in the 70’s and applied on television before computers. what is pixel size

RGB (Red, Green, Blue) what is pixel size

what is pixel size
what is pixel size

When working on a digital image and having to transform the numerical information stored by a pixel into a color, we must not only know the depth of the color, but also the brightness and model of that color. To achieve this, we need to know the bit size of each pixel.

Taking the three primary colors of light as a base, these being the ones that allow us to compose the different shades of the color palette, we have what are the results of the images that we see on computers, mobile devices, electronic tablets, televisions, among others, regardless of whether it is video games, videos, applications or images.

If we want to understand how the information of a pixel is processed, we must first take into account the intensity of the brightness of the color and its depth, for that, we must know the color model. In the same way in which one works in the discipline of visual arts, when we mix red and green pixels, we will obtain as a result of that combination, an area of ​​the image in yellow, and so on to create different tones. what is pixel size

RGB is a model that, as we said before, is based on the colors red, green and blue, and through the different combinations with different intensities, they are what creates the image. RGB usually has 8 bits which result from the three colors combined.

Thanks to its composition today, a large part of computer and digital devices, such as monitors, scanners, cameras, among other things, usually use the RGB model for the representation of images.

Resolution what is pixel size

what is pixel size
what is pixel size

Depending on the screen on which the image is viewed, it will have a better resolution, that is, depending on the definition of the screen, the greater the number of pixels will be.

Let’s say that for example you have an HD television, its width is 1920 and the length is 1080; When you multiply these are numbers, the result will be the total number of pixels that there are, in this case they would be: 2,073,600. Otherwise, if the TV had a shorter length and width, the number of pixels would be lower.

All pixels are square or rectangular, and their possible color combinations are endless, and they have become highly developed compared to early digital images that lacked reality and smoothness.

Color use systems

The bitmap is the most primitive of the two that exist, because it only admits a maximum variation of 256 colors, each pixel with a single byte, this only includes pixels that are encoded by means of a group of bits of a determined length, the Pixel encoding will determine the number of color variations that the image can display.

On the other hand, true color images have three bytes per pixel, tripling the result of possible variations, going over the 16 million color options, giving the image greater reality.

The transformation of the numerical data stored in a pixel into a color requires knowing the depth and brightness, but also the color model to be used, the most common model, already mentioned above, is RGB (Red-Green-Blue ) that creates the colors from the combination of red, green and blue.

It should be noted taking into account the previously explained, that we are also facing a very specific expression called a dead pixel, in it we can include all those pixels that do not work correctly or as they should in what is, for example, a screen of LCD type.

On the other hand, the existence of the so-called stuck pixel cannot be forgotten, characterized by having a solid color, either blue or green, and we must also bear in mind the hot pixel, that white pixel that we always find on.

Pixels are taking on an important role in the world of animation that we cannot ignore, to such an extent that the creation of a new type of art has taken place, which is released under the name of Pixel Art. This, that we could To name as a discipline, it consists of the editing of images from the computer, using a series of very specific computer programs.

Apart from this discipline we can find two essential elements: one with which three-dimensional effects are achieved, which is the isometric style, and the other that is identified by being everything that does not fit into the previous category, which is the non-style. isometric.

Type of images affected by pixelation

Even if there are pixelated illustrations on purpose, this effect can be unpleasant in the case of several images, because although in the case of not existing, the digital image would not either, they are designed to form it, not to appear or be noticed. in them, unless they are sought. what is pixel size

In any case, this effect will only affect when enlarging our images that are in bitmap-type graphic formats, in other words, it will affect all those images that are in BMP, TIFF, JPEG, PNG formats, and among others.

Knowing this we can clarify that there are two types of images, the one mentioned above, of type bitmap, also known as Raster or vector type, which differ from each other because bitmap images can store the color information of each pixel, determining in this way the final quality of the image.

This type of image is limited by factors that cannot be fixed without sacrificing quality, such as height, width, color depth and resolution, all these fixed values ​​that dictate that the image cannot be enlarged to any resolution. without going through the pixelation, sacrificing quality.

On the other hand, vector-type graphics represent an image by means of geometric objects, such as Bézier curves and polygons, and can be enlarged without encountering any restriction to a very high level of detail. what is pixel size

In turn, for these reasons, in the area of ​​graphic design and printing, a vector image format is always preferred when they are strokes or fonts that will be printed in the so-called gigantography technique, since, as explained before, it can be magnified hundreds of times without distortion.

The same does not happen when we try to print photographs in bitmap and we want them to be large, since in this way said image must be specially prepared, and treated in such a way that we can achieve a high resolution, a fact that will allow us to be able to print it. in a considerable size. what is pixel size

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