LESSON THREE

STILL IMAGES

Still images are the important element of a multimedia project or a web site. In order to make a
multimedia presentation look elegant and complete, it is necessary to spend ample amount of
time to design the graphics and the layouts.

An image consists of a rectangular array of dots called pixels. The size of the image is specified
in terms of width X height, in numbers of the pixels. The physical size of the image, in inches
or centimeters, depends on the resolution of the device on which the image is displayed. The
image resolution correspond to the number of pixels contained per inch (1 inch = 2,54 cm) and
is expressed in DPI (Dot per inch).
The higher the number of pixels, the higher the quantity of information. For instance a 300 DPI
image corresponds to 300 (length) x 300 (height) pixels image, which means 90 000 pixels.
An image will appear smaller on a device with a higher resolution than on one with a lower
resolution. For color images, one needs enough bits per pixel to represent all the colors in the
image. The number of the bits per pixel is called the depth of the image.

Image Data Types

Images can be created by using different techniques of representation of data called data type
like monochrome and colored images. Monochrome image is created by using single color
whereas colored image is created by using multiple colors. Some important data types of images
are following:
 1-bit images- An image is a set of pixels. Note that a pixel is a picture element in digital
image. In 1-bit images, each pixel is stored as a single bit (0 or 1). A bit has only two
 states either on or off, white or black, true or false. Therefore, such an image is also
referred to as a binary image, since only two states are available. 1-bit image is also
known as 1-bit monochrome images because it contains one color that is black for off
state and white for on state.
A 1-bit image with resolution 640*480 needs a storage space of 640*480 bits.
640 x 480 bits. = (640 x 480) / 8 bytes = (640 x 480) / (8 x 1024) KB= 37.5KB.
The clarity or quality of 1-bit image is very low.
 8-bit Gray level images- Each pixel of 8-bit gray level image is represented by a single
byte (8 bits). Therefore each pixel of such image can hold 2 8=256 values between 0 and
255. Therefore each pixel has a brightness value on a scale from black (0 for no
brightness or intensity) to white (255 for full brightness or intensity). For example, a
dark pixel might have a value of 15 and a bright one might be 240.
A 8-bit image with resolution 640 x 480 needs a storage space of 640 x 480 bytes=(640
x 480)/1024 KB= 300KB. Therefore an 8-bit image needs 8 times more storage space
than 1-bit image.
 24-bit color images - In 24-bit color image, each pixel is represented by three bytes,
usually representing RGB (Red, Green and Blue). Usually true color is defined to mean
256 shades of RGB (Red, Green and Blue) for a total of 16777216 color variations.
Many 24-bit color images are stored as 32-bit images, and an extra byte for each pixel
used to store an alpha value representing special effect information.
A 24-bit color image with resolution 640 x 480 needs a storage space of 640 x 480x 3
bytes = (640 x 480 x 3) / 1024=900KB without any compression. Also 32-bit color
image with resolution 640 x 480 needs a storage space of 640 x 480 x 4 bytes= 1200KB
without any compression.

Disadvantages
o Require large storage space
o Many monitors can display only 256 different colors at any one time. Therefore,
in this case it is wasteful to store more than 256 different colors in an image.

Making Still Images

Still images may be small or large, or even full screen. Whatever their form, still images are
generated by the computer in two ways: as bitmap (or paint graphics) and as vector-drawn (or
just plain drawn) graphics. Bitmaps are used for photo-realistic images and for complex drawing
requiring fine detail. Vector-drawn objects are used for lines, boxes, circles, polygons, and other
graphic shapes that can be mathematically expressed in angles, coordinates, and distances.
Still images may be the most important element of your multimedia project. If you are designing
multimedia by yourself, put yourself in the role of graphic artist and layout designer.
i. Capturing and Editing Images: It is possible to use the Prt Scr key available in the
keyboard to capture an image. You can also use snipping tool

ii. Clip art collections

iii. Vector drawing: CAD (AutoCAD)

Image File Formats

 GIF- Graphics Interchange Formats- The GIF format was created by Compuserve. It
supports 256 colors. GIF format is the most popular on the Internet because of its
compact size. It is ideal for small icons used for navigational purpose and simple
diagrams. GIF creates a table of up to 256 colors from a pool of 16 million.
GIFs can be animated, which is another reason they became so successful. Most
animated banner ads are GIFs. GIFs allow single bit transparency that is when you are
creating your image, you can specify which color is to be transparent. This provision
allows the background colors of the web page to be shown through the image.
 JPEG- Joint Photographic Experts Group- The JPEG format was developed by the
Joint Photographic Experts Group. JPEG files are bitmapped images. It store
information as 24-bit color. This is the format of choice for nearly all photograph images
on the internet. Digital cameras save images in a JPEG format by default. It has become
the main graphics file format for the World Wide Web and any browser can support it
without plug-ins. In order to make the file small, JPEG uses lossy compression. It works
well on photographs, artwork and similar materials but not so well on lettering, simple
cartoons or line drawings. JPEG images work much better than GIFs. Though JPEG can
be interlaced, still this format lacks many of the other special abilities of GIFs, like
animations and transparency, but they really are only for photos.
 PNG- Portable Network Graphics- PNG is the only lossless format that web browsers
support. PNG supports 8 bit, 24 bits, 32 bits and 48 bits data types. One version of the
format PNG-8 is similar to the GIF format. But PNG is superior to the GIF. It produces
smaller files and with more options for colors. It supports partial transparency also.
PNG-24 is another flavor of PNG, with 24-bit color supports, allowing ranges of color
akin to high color JPEG. PNG-24 is in no way a replacement format for JPEG because it
is a lossless compression format.
 TIFF- Tagged Image File Format- The TIFF format was developed by the Aldus
Corporation in the 1980 and was later supported by Microsoft. TIFF file format is
widely used bitmapped file format. It is supported by many image editing applications,
software used by scanners and photo retouching programs.
 TIFF can store many different types of image ranging from 1 bit image, grayscale
image, 8 bit color image, 24 bit RGB image etc.
 BMP- Bitmap- The bitmap file format (BMP) is a very basic format supported by most
Windows applications. BMP can store many different type of image: 1 bit image,
grayscale image, 8 bit color image, 24 bit RGB image etc. BMP files are uncompressed.
Therefore, these are not suitable for the internet. BMP files can be compressed using
lossless data compression algorithms.
 EPS- Encapsulated Postscript- The EPS format is a vector based graphic. EPS is
popular for saving image files because it can be imported into nearly any kind of
application. This file format is suitable for printed documents. Main disadvantage of this
format is that it requires more storage as compare to other formats.
 PDF- Portable Document Format- PDF format is vector graphics with embedded pixel
graphics with many compression options. When your document is ready to be shared
with others or for publication. This is only format that is platform independent. If you
have Adobe Acrobat you can print from any document to a PDF file. From illustrator
you can save as .PDF.
 EXIF- Exchange Image File- Exif is an image format for digital cameras. A variety of
tage are available to facilitate higher quality printing, since information about the
camera and picture - taking condition can be stored and used by printers for possible
color correction algorithms. It also includes specification of file format for audio that
accompanies digital images.
 WMF- Windows MetaFile- WMF is the vector file format for the MS-Windows
operating environment. It consists of a collection of graphics device interface function
calls to the MS-Windows graphics drawing library. Metafiles are both small and
flexible, these images can be displayed properly by their proprietary software’s only.
 PICT- PICT images are useful in Macintosh software development, but you should
avoid them in desktop publishing. Avoid using PICT format in electronic publishing-
PICT images are prone to corruption.
 Photoshop- This is the native Photoshop file format created by Adobe. You can import
this format directly into most desktop publishing applications.

Exercise: what are raster graphics, types of vector drawing

List a few software that can be used for creating images.