Pixels
Pixels are small dots that make up the picture seen on a computer display, the dots are known as bits or binary digits, the term ‘pixel’ is actually short for picture element. An image is comprised with thousands of small pixels all compressed together to create a picture. There need to be thousands of little pixels within an image to make it look smooth; if there are only a few pixels in an image then it will look very blocky and chunky, making the picture not look very appealing, this is also known as ‘pixilation’. An image has a specific resolution due to the amount of pixels within an image making it the image look good at a specific size, so if an image didn’t have many pixels then the image would be very small so that it looks nice, but when this image is enlarged it would become distorted and not look correct and then you may be able to see the pixels that have been used. To find out the amount of pixels within an image you can check the width and height of an image, for example a picture has resolution of 1280x1024 this would mean there are 1280 pixels from one side to the other, and 1024 from top to bottom. One other way you can figure out the number of pixels within an image would be to look at the megapixels, this is a single number that expresses the amount of pixels within the picture, for example you can get a 5 megapixel camera, and a megapixel is equal to 1 million pixels. To figure out how many megapixels there are in an image would be to multiply the height by the width, such as 1280 x 1024 = 1,310,720, or 1.31 megapixels. Images intensity is measured by three different beams of light; these are red, blue and green. If all are set to the highest level then the images would become white, whereas if all the light is set to the lowest level then the image would be black. An image with a high intensity would look much better than an image with a low one as it would make the image look more professional and cleaner, although if an images intensity is too high then the file size would become larger and may not be suitable for a webpage as it may not appear or it would take a very long time to appear. Due to this it would make a viewer of the website displeased and would give them negative views about the website and the business that it belongs to and so most websites will use images with a slightly lower intensity.

Raster images
Also known as 'Bitmap', this is when you see the individual pixies when you zoom in on a picture. A raster image is measured in pixels, this is because when they are enlarged they begin to lose shape and become blocky and do not look as good and smooth as the original image. Imaging files tend to be very large, this can be a very frustrating problem and to combat it all you need to do is compress the file, this is where you decrease the file size so that it is easier to store and you would not have to buy something that can store your new image. There are two different ways you can compress an image, one will enable you to squeeze the large image file into smaller spaces, and this will not cause any lossless compression. The second way would be to enable greater saving size but this may loss the picture detail. When you are saving an images you can give them many different file extensions, these will give you different file sizes so that you can have an image be compressed and be smaller to save storage space or you can have them as big as you wish. These file extensions are .png .gif .bmp etc. A BMP file is mainly used for saving a large image that is uncompressed, these are very useful as they are very simple and are accepted on most windows programs. The PNG file is used as it supports truecolour (16 million colours) and is seen as being the successor to the GIF. The PNG is designed to work well with online viewing applications so it is fully streamable with an advanced display option.

Vector Images

Unlike JPEGs, GIFs, and BMP images, vector graphics are not made up of a grid of pixels. Instead, vector graphics are comprised of paths, which are defined by a start and end point, along with other points, curves, and angles along the way. A path can be a line, a square, a triangle, or a curvy shape. These paths can be used to create simple drawings or complex diagrams. Paths are even used to define the characters of specific typefaces. Vector images can be zoomed in as far as possible without becoming pixelated, unlike a bitmap/raster image. Vector images are often used as logos as opposed to raster images. Vector images also have three different file extentions, these are .eps .ai .fla. An EPS file uses ‘postscripts’ in the name and it describes images and exports them to desktop publishing programs such as microsoft publisher or to a postscript printer. If you were to print out an EPS image then you would need a postscript printer, also an EPS File size would be very large. An AI file is short for Adobe Illustraitor which is the main program used to create a vector image. These images, unlike rater images, can be reasized and recoloured. Finally there is the FLA this, similar to AI files, is a default for an Adobe Flash file. These are mostly used for web construction because if an image needed any changes to be applied then the FLA file could be extracted and edited.

Bit Depth

Bit depth is the amount of bits dedicated to describing and recording tonal and colour variations. Images that have a higher bit depth than others will have a greater potential for colour or tonal accuracy, however sometimes this cannot be viewed due to limitations from output devices. If ever you change the dimensions or the resolution of image pixels will either be removed or added, this is sampling. Each pixel within the image will have its depth changed in quality, colour, saturation sharpness etc. BPP stands for ‘Bits per pixel’ and as you can tell this is how many bits are in an image. A 24bit image would be made up of three 8bit channels, took figure this out you would need to multiply three by eight giving you twenty four. Although this does not refer to an RGB image as being a 24-bit but rather as an RGB colour and lists the bit depth of each channel rather than an entire image. The more BPP within an image will make it look smoother and a lot neater.
Here is a 10 BPP image compared to a 12 BPP image:

The term monochrome when talking about images usually means black and white, or greyscale, but it can also be used to refer to other combinations using only tones of a single colour, such as green and white or green and black. It may also refer to sepia displaying tones from light tan to dark brown. High colour supports 15/16-bit for three RGB colours. This type of bit depth can sometimes be used in small devices with a colour display, such as a mobile phone. True colour supports 24-bit for three RGB colours, this provides a method of representing and storing graphical-image information in an RGB colour space such that a very large number of colours, shades, and hues can be displayed within an image.
Colour Space
A colour space is a specific organization of colours. In image, a greyscale digital image is an image where the value of each pixel is a single sample that carries only intensity information. With a greyscale image the picture will only be black and white, it will have a very wide range of different shades of the colour grey, black would be the images weakest intensity and white would be the strongest. RGB colour models are additive colour models, these are when red, green and blue light are added together in numerous different ways to create a wide spread of different colours, the reason it is called RGB is because it is the blending of ‘R’ed, ‘G’reen and ‘B’lue, the three additive primary colours.
Image Capture
Image capture is an application created by Apple so that users are able to upload images from their digital cameras or scanners. A digital camera is a type of camera that takes digital images and videos ands stores them internally for later use, today digital cameras have become the most common and widely used camera due to their easy-to-use capabilities and stunning picture quality, also digital cameras can be found on many different devices such as a PDA, mobile phones, computers and even some vehicles. Unlike a film camera, a digital one will store the image and allow you to look at it on a small screen where you can view the quality of the image and even add slight edits. There are many different digital cameras you can get such as: Point and Shot, these have few controls, you can also get a Bridge camera that best used to take photographs of wildlife or sports events as it has a fixed lens and a long zoom, another camera is a Digital SLR, this has a single lens reflex and can change lenses, finally you can get a Mirrorless camera that also can change lenses. Another way you are able to gain images is by the use of image scanner, or more commonly known ‘scanners’, this is a product that scans images, printed text, handwriting and even objects and turns them into digital images.

Optimising
Image optimising is when you convert an image file so that it can be display in a web page, this means that you will be making the file smaller and the image. The file size needs to be reduced in some cases as when a web page downloads into a browser it will load faster, if a web page is not loading properly then this will give the viewer a bad impression of the site and will most likely criticize not only the web page but also the company behind it. If there is not sufficient optimisation then the graphic file will increase the overall file size of a webpage and will cause a slow download. To reduce a file size you need to reduce the visual information, this is when you reduce the number of colours/tones within an image; this is not much of an issue as when a graphic is displayed on a computer screen the resolution is lower than that required for printed media. As you can see from the example image, the best file format for a small file would be GIF, then JPEG, then a fireworks document and the biggest if a TIF file. GIF images are good for logos as they are transparent but do not have many colours, only 286, so they would not be good for saving a photo and they also have lossless compression. Next is the JPEG, these are good for if you want to save a photo but not really useful for anything else as they are not transparent and have lossy compression. Dimensions are the specific length and width of an image. However by changing the dimensions of a graphic can distort the image and make the image smaller or bigger depending on the purpose of the image .When changing the dimensions of an image the volume of pixels will stay the same, the only difference is that the larger the image the more space the pixels will have to cover this can make the image quality not as good. When you are creating graphics the intended image output is always essential as they need to not only fit on the webpage, but also be at a decent standard to be accessed and downloaded quickly by the viewer’s computer. Intended image output is a computer file that contains data which are the outputs of a device or program. Graphic resolution can optimise the quality of an image, however both will not be optimised at the same time, optimising an images quality will make the file size much bigger, this may not be to beneficial for you but your users may benefit from the higher visual quality. Although if you do decide that you want to reduce the graphic quality then the image quality will be much worse, this is all up to the users preference though. An images dimensions are the width and length of the graphic, by changing the dimensions of an image you are able to change the size and shape of an image, this will vary depending on the location of an image. When you do change the dimensions of an image then the volume of the pixels stay the same but they have to move more space, this is why an image will look distorted and fuzzy. Figuring out the Intended image output is very important when making graphics for a webpage, you will need to know if it is at a decent enough standard to be accessed and processed by a user’s computer quickly. The Intended image output basically provides the guidelines as to how you should create your graphics.

Stimulus

Client Brief

For this task I have been asked by a marketing agency that want to sell lesiure products in the future and would like me to create a website that can promote and sell their new product, the client has specified that the website must be engaging, appropriately presented and suitable for the target audience. It must also have easy to use navigation and must be welcoming and aesthetically pleasing from the homepage and through out the website.
Own Brief

The website I will be creating will be on video gaming as this is a very large market, many people play video games and is very common leisure product, it is also a good idea as it appeals to both genders and has a very broad age range as there are games for everybody. To gain ideas I had to look at other existing sites around a similar product so I can make the best possible product. I will make my website very clear and easy to use as from looking at websites such as ‘CEX’ I can see there is a lot on their homepage making it look very busy and can be difficult to find things.

Market Research

For my market research I have looked at two different websites both primarily centred around video gaming, these are ‘GAME’ and ‘CEX’, the both promote new up and coming games and show reviews on their products so that the customer can have a good insight on what they I buying, this is a good idea that I will incorporate into my own website. Not only do they sell video games, but also things such as, game controllers, game consoles, gaming headsets and many other things. Both homepages on each website are very busy and cluttered, this is going to be something I want to avoid so that it is easy to find what you want and know where you are going with easy navigation. I will also keep to a simple colour scheme as that is what ‘GAME’ does and it looks a lot more professional where as ‘CEX’ again looks very cluttered. I will use a green colour scheme as I have not seen any other videos game websites with one so this is an original concept.