Exercise 3

What is a Pixel?

Pixel is just one of many tiny coloured dots that make up an image. It uses the smallest unit then displays this as a digital display. The more pixels you have the more better the quality the image is. Although we see the dots as squares, they are not actually squares.

Raster Images (BMP, GIF, TIFF, JPEG)

Raster Images use independent pixels to make up an image. If you make the image bigger the quality goes down.

BMP is an acronym for Bitmap. BMP images are used to store digital images on Windows. To create Bitmap images you can use different colours using tiny pixels. Bitmap image files are very large and the downside is when they are compressed they reduce the quality.

GIF in an acronym for Graphics Interchange Format. It is a lossless format for image files that supports both animated and static images. They are also very good to use on web browsers and when designing animated sprites.

TIFF is an acronym for Tagged Image File Format. It is a format for image files. This is mainly used by printing industries. The file format is large however it is used for professional photography. The benefit is that you can save it in different file formats. The difference between TIFF and JPEG is although they are both pix-elated, TIFF is more better than JPEG, as it retains more colour depth.

JPEG is an acronym for Joint Photographic Experts Group. It is a format for compressing image files and used by digital cameras. This is mainly used by digital photographers. The only problem with this format is when you come to edit and then compress the image, it reduces file size and quality. Photographers capture the format in raw format which makes it easier to edit and helps retain much quality as possible.

Vector Images (PSD, WMF, FLA, AI)

Vector Images use polygons to represent images. If you make the images bigger the quality stays the same, therefor when designing computer graphics it is better to use Vector Images.

PSD is an acronym for Photoshop Document. It is the default format that Photoshop uses for saving data. When you create an image in Photoshop it has multiple layers. The benefit for this file format is you can edit this as much as possible because it is not flattened yet. However, once it is compressed it make it more difficult to edit as it becomes more pix-elated. 

WMF is an acronym for Windows Metafile Format. It is an image file that has more than one format. You can save both these formats using the WMF file extension. Although I have not used this file format i'm not too sure how popular this file format is. But in terms of adobe which is leading the way and is more industrious. A WMF file is only supported within windows and will not be able to open other operating systems.

FLA file format is the "master" document format for Flash projects. When you create a new Flash file in the Macromedia Flash authoring program, you create an FLA file.

AI is an acronym for Adobe Illustrator. It is a proprietary file format developed by Adobe Systems for representing single-page vector-based drawings.