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Computer Game Graphics

Isometric Projection

Isometric Projection is a design in which 2-D objects are shown in 3-D visually. It is done by taking 3 coordinate axes and the angle between them is 120 degrees, which gives it a 3-D atmosphere. Professor William Farish first discovered the isometric projection, though it had existed through rough ideas over the centuries. In the 19th century,

Perspective is key in isometric projection. Everyone needs to look at a certain angle when viewing 2-D objects in a 3-D way. There are 8 different ways to see an isometric view. Like in the image below, the stairs carry on going upwards. This is because the shape is tilted on a certain angle so our eyes see continuing stairs. It’s called the ‘triangle of Penrose’ which was created by Lionel Penrose

and his son Rodger.

Isometric is also used in a lot of video games. These days, people associate it possibly with a game called ‘Farmville’, which became very popular when players could create and edit their own farm.

But a lot more were created before ‘Farmville’. Back in the 80’s, isometric games such as ‘Q*Bert’ and ‘Knight Lore’ exploded into a massive market in which everyone wanted to be a part of. Most arcade games back then used an isometric view in some cases, which carried on into the 90’s, with games like the original ‘Fallout’ and ‘Diablo’. It later lost interest years later, when 3-D graphics were invented, in which the camera could be freely rotated 360’. This was mainly used in RPG’s (Role Playing Games) like ‘Vandal Hearts’ and ‘Final Fantasy Tactics’.

Pixel Art

Pixel Art is created through raster graphics software where in which art is pixelated so it can be used in electronic games (i.e. Video, Computer and mobile games). It was first shown by Adele Goldberg and Robert Flegal of Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre in 1982, but was first a concept by Richard Shoup in his Superpaint system, in 1972. There are a lot of different techniques for pixel art like dithering, in which 2 colours in a 2x2 checkerboard pattern, you then could change the density of the colours which leads to different subtones.

Stylised Dithering is where 2x2 pixel are randomly mixed together to get different textures (it also produces circles in the pixels). Anti-aliasing is different, because it can be done by hand, to create transitions and curves. This creates a texture that’s crisp for the background of artwork. Some tools aren’t considered valid for concept art. For example, Image Filters (such as alpha blending) and tools with automatic anti-aliasing because they automatically calculate new pixel values.

Pixel art is split into two categories: isometric and non-isometric. Isometric is is drawn in a isometric diametric projection, this means the art is usually shown in a 3-D view but not a 3-D processing. Non-isometric art is when the pixel art is shown in anyway apart from an isometric view, like bird’s eye view, side view or perspective view. They can also be called Planometric views.

With 3-D graphics ever improving in video games, pixel art became quite obsolete in the gaming industry, though it’s still used in other things like advertising. But many people believed pixel art or, ‘Modern Pixel Art’ as they call it, is the “Golden age for second and third generation consoles”. But pixel art started to come back popular with internet games like ‘Habbo’ and ‘CityPixel’. And is still used for graphics in games in the ‘Nintendo DS’.

Concept Art

Concept Art is basically a rough illustration or drawing for films, video games or animation before its put through to a final design, then into the final product. It can also be known as visual art for design of fashion or retail.

It’s been a popular topic since the 1930’s when used in Disney films, but no one really came up with ‘concept art’, or was never really noticed, but made it into an industry that’s became a celebrated job. Concept art is most associated with design of any kind, like set and architectural work.

Most of the themes or subjects that involve concept art are mostly from video/computer games. Themes are mostly focused on Science fiction (Portal 2) and fantasy (World of Warcraft), but it can vary. (I.e. war games: Call of Duty, Medal of Honour.) A particular video game made hundreds of concept art drawing for their work was ‘Bioshock’.

2K’s ‘Bioshock’ is computer/ video game which had its release in 2007. Widely loved by many game reviewers and fanatics, ‘Bioshock’ became the third best-selling game of that year, selling over 490,000 copies. Metacritic said “Bioshock creates a living, unique and

unpredictable FPS experience.” But many reviewers didn’t just enjoy the vast gameplay it brought to the table. Everyone noticed the stunning sites and the atmosphere it shone. It mixed the beautiful 1960’s with the disgusting and creepy monsters that lure beneath the sea.

More than 500 pieces of concept art has been released since Bioshock was first announced and is still going. With the special editions of both ‘Bioshock’ and ‘Bioshock 2’, every customer got a book containing all the art produced from the making process. And with the release of ‘Bioshock Infinite’, 2K has been releasing more images of what we should be expecting from the stunning series.

Sprites

A sprite is an animation or image in 2D or 3D that’s integrated into a much larger scene. It used to be referred to graphical objects handled in the memory bitmap of a video display, but is now used to describe various graphical displays.

They were originally used to put unrelated bitmaps integrated onto a normal bitmap on a screen, for example, creating an animated character that can be moved across the screen.

Sprites can be made from circuitry or software.

In the circuitry part, a sprite is made from a hardware construct that employs custom DMA channels to show visual elements. In the software part, it’s basically the same but can simulate this through specialized rendering techniques.

Now that three dimensional graphics become more popular, the term has changed to where flat images are put onto three dimensional backgrounds, which is complicated and time effecting.

Sprites have been used in lots of video and computer games over the years. Like the Atari 400(as seen on the left) and 800 used a similar circuitry way of creating the images for their games. But with the three dimensional sprites taking over the industry of computer graphics, 2D sprites became obsolete in a way, even though when people use the word “sprite” they see two dimensional.

With an explosion of enhanced 3D graphics over the last few years, sprites became quite unpopular, where it’s not used as much in handheld video games and mobile phone games. This is due to photorealistic video games like present a computer game that looks realistic enough to look like real life.

It’s not to say that sprites in games have become obsolete, many popular games still are used that use sprites. Games like ‘Habbo’ still are used to this day. ‘Habbo’ is an online game where the user can create his own sprite. The user can also create their very own house and build their own objects.

Texture Art

Texture art is thought as the feel of an artwork or graphical image. With texture art, it’s about using our imagination to create an idea of what something feels like. Like in the Bioshock 2 logo seen to the left, from the image we can see rust developing from the background. This would give us a texture of a really crusty and jagged feel to it.

Colour is also a very important aspect. We associate colours all the time with our emotions, like a simple red could represent anger, or a blue could represent peace.

‘Bioshock’ is a game in which its texture makes it graphically stunning. Set in an underground city, many of the characters were special diving suits, which rust a lot. The feel and look at the rust on a ‘Big Daddy’s’ Suit

makes the image look photorealistic and amazing to look at. Bioshock is one of those games which closely concentrate on the texture of its art throughout all 2 games, and even the new game ‘Bioshock Infinite’

Print Media Art

Print media art is everything that a computer game displays and shows. A print media piece of art can come from anything to do with a computer game, from the packaging it came in, or even game box it stays in.

Print media is the thing that makes the game look more exciting to the audience without even playing the game. Most computer games use this art work for

their packaging all the time to make the game look stunning. It attracts the customer into buying the product. These days, most people buy video games for guns and explosions, so say if a front cover of a video game has an explosion in the background of a man holding a gun, customers will be immediately attracted. Big and bold colours also attract the customer, it makes it stand out on the shop shelves.

Like the image to the left. The recently released ‘Gears of War 3 .tm’ used print media art for the front cover of the game packaging. It makes the game stand out beautifully. The bright colours but also dark makes it visually brilliant to look at. They don’t just create this one piece of artwork though. Game companies create thousands of images for just one game so they have various choices of images for packaging.

A lot of game companies make different editions to their games, to give the buyer more to do with the game. ‘Gears of War 3.tm’ did this just like many of the games that are released produce these days. Most of the items that the companies give away are cheap and easy to make but sell them at ridiculous prices. The ‘Gears of War3 .tm’ Epic Edition, contained the game itself, a statue of the main character, a ceremonial flag, a ‘COG’ Medal, scraps of papers associated from the game and downloadable content (all seen below). Altogether, the price was £100. It probably didn’t cost the company half this much to make, but fans still buy this kind of merchandise as they become obsessed with the franchise.

Artistic Styles Used In Computer Games

Photo realism

When a video game uses graphics and images that are so life like, they’re called photo realistic. It was hard to find a game that used it in the past, but these days, when technology is beyond our imagination, photo realism is easy to find. Some game companies take their time when creating a game and focuses on their graphics to create a photorealistic feel. They spend more time and money on this to create a sense of the real world in a computer game. Most computer games that are created these days are all photorealistic. A lot of people spend money to see a game for their graphics, not story.

One of the first games to create a photorealistic feel was the first ‘Gran Turismo’. It’s a racing game in which you’re in the driving seat. Its graphics were amazing for its time and received excellent reviews, like a 9.5/10 from IGN and a 10/10 from PlayStation Magazine.

Many video games have taken their time to be released to focus on photorealism; big title like ‘L.A. Noire’ and ‘Alan Wake’ took many years to be released into the market. Rockstar’s ‘L.A. Noire’ used motion capture technology, which means every action and detail was done by a human being then put into a

computer to be developed for the video game, like seen in the image to the left. The actor/actress is surrounded by 32 high definition cameras, which watch every single move and action. On Xbox 360, the game had to be put onto 3 discs because the graphics were so advanced, but the PlayStation 3 discs are built for high definition graphics (I.e. Blu-ray discs). The bar was raised for computer graphics after L.A. Noire. Nobody has ever seen anything like it in a computer game. Though PlayStation’s Heavy Rain argues it has very similar graphics, just not as sophisticated.

‘Alan Wake’ was another game that took a long time to be released due to graphics, but also script problems (5 years to be exact). The main character (which is self-titled after the game) was modelled after the Finnish actor

and journalist Ilkka Villi and voiced by the actor Matthew Porretta. The modelling focused on the facial expressions of the characters, with every word looking like it was real.

“Developers of this era of 3D engines often tout their increasingly photorealistic quality. These engines include realistic shader-based materials with predefined physics, environments with procedural and vertex shader-based objects (vegetation, debris, human-made objects such as books or tools), procedural animation, cinematographic effects (depth of field, motion blur, etc.), High dynamic range rendering, and unified lighting models with soft shadowing and volumetric lighting.” – From Wikipedia

Cel-Shading

Cel-Shading is a type of non-photorealistic rendering on animation or video game graphics. It’s a technique to make 3-D graphics appear to look hand drawn. This is to create a cartoony and comic look to a model. Its most commonly associated with video games, but

the style has only really just taken off as a type of computer graphic.

The process is actually quite simple. It involves first creating a three dimensional model. Conventional lighting values are calculated for each pixel in the model. Each pixel is given smooth highlights and shadows to create a flat two dimensional look to the model. Black ink outlines and contour lines are created into the model to give it texture and the 2-D look. Then the image is composited via Z-buffering, which means the original 3-D model will always stay behind the shadows and outlines. Originally this term was called the Shading technique, but is now called Cel-Shading because it’s used frequently in video games and animation. Many computer games use the Cel-Shading

technique, Like in ‘The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker’ and ‘Borderlands’.

Many of the Zelda games have used Cel-shading technique. The main game that was recognised was ‘The Wind Waker’. It was controversial at the time for using Cel-shading as the past games of Zelda didn’t use this technique, but the use of colour that the game presented made it look beautiful, and to this day still looks excellent.

Abstraction

Abstraction is a process in which an idea or thought is modelled around a real concept. It can mean many things, for reducing the information of a concept, like the idea of an old Sega video game; you reduce the idea down to just a video game. It ultimately reduces the information and ideas behind it, but it’s still a general video game.

Many computer and video games are abstract; companies take ideas and add or take away some details from the original. In fact, most games these days are completely abstract. Not many are actual original ideas.

An obvious abstract idea is the zombie genre. Most zombie games follow the same pattern of an infection spreading, and survivors fighting for their lives. It’s just some games tweak with the original. ‘Dead rising’ did an original idea for video games, which was a man, who needs to find out what’s going on round the world that’s so special. To

break his big story as a journalist, he spends 72 hours in a mall to get evidence. Throughout the story, you must help people and protect them from zombies. Then in 2010, Rockstar released ‘Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare’ which is similar to ‘Dead Rising’. The Main character must save certain spots in his towns from being overrun from zombies and must help innocent people from zombies along the way.

Exaggeration

Exaggeration is a form of taking certain aspects of something too far. It’s like when somebody has told you something a couple of times, but you forget. Then the other person says “I’ve told you a billion times”. Obviously the person hasn’t told you a billion times, it’s just to make it seem much worse or better than it actually is.

In computer games and animation, Exaggeration is used a lot more than people think. In anime and manga, exaggerating is used frequently. A popular manga series called ‘Naruto’ exaggerates all the time with its fighting techniques and facial expressions like in the image to the left. In real life, no human could make that facial expression, but it’s to overdo the anger the character is in. Most fighting scenes in manga are exaggerated, from punching someone

in the face and the face moulds over the fist.

Many computer games use exaggeration in their gameplay. A recent title called ‘WWE All Stars’ exaggerated the wrestling moves. The player could perform a special move and pick another player up at least 20 feet into the air and throw them to the floor. With this action, the characters also shun colours from themselves.

Lossy Compression

Lossy compression is a data encoding way of compressing a file, such as an image, and making it smaller. The method is to make data smaller than needs to be held and discarding the left overs of the data. But like in the image below, the bottom image has been substantially compressed compared to the top, making the image distorted and blurry.

Lossy compression is used most in the multimedia side of data like images, videos and audio.

With Lossy compression, it’s most known for losing data all the time. When data is Lossy compressed repeatedly, the file will keep losing more and more data every time. Unlike, lossless data compression, which won’t lose any data with a procedure like this.

There are some advantages for Lossy compression over lossless though. Lossy compression can create a much smaller compressed file and still produce the provisions of an application. It can do this better than any other lossless method.

With the Lossy compression method, it’s often used for videos and music because it’s easier for humans to interpret. This is because Lossy gets rid of some data when compressing, but the human mind can “fill in the blanks” or we can just see past errors in some data or files.

Lossless Compression

Lossless compression is a form of data compression that can reconstruct the original files/data from the compressed data without losing any data in the process. The lossless data compression is used in many applications such as ZIP files format. It’s also used a lot in lossy compression data.

Lossless compression is used mostly when an image and the identical decompressed image look exactly the same. Some types of image formats only use lossless like GIF and PNG.

There are many methods of lossless compression. One example is the Pigeonhole principle. The algorithm for this principle can’t compress all data and any

random data streams. For this reason, different algorithms are designed with a specific type of input data.

Lossless Data Compression is mostly used in Data and programs and certain multimedia files and programs. It can’t guarantee that compression for all the files requested to compress. To put a long story short, for any data compression, there will be a data input that will not get compressed. Not all files can be compressed.

The advantage of using lossless compression: you will get an exact copy of the file/data which was compressed.

The disadvantage of using lossless compression: in any compression, there should be a compression ratio of 50/50, but there can’t be a ratio with lossless, as it doesn’t lose any part of a file/data. If you needed a higher compression ratio, you would have to reduce the file by more than 50%, but this would only work with lossy compression.

Image Capture

Scanner

A Scanner is a computing device in which a two dimensional image or text can optically copied and converted to a digital image. The Scanner consists of many things which create a copy of a specific thing.

The core of the scanner is the CCD array (Charged Couple Device). It’s the most common thing found in image capture for scanners. The CCD is little diodes that turn protons of light into electrons of electrical charge. The diodes are called Photosites.

The more light that hits the Photosites, the bigger the electrical charge will be.

Next, the image that you want to be scanned goes to the CCD array though a number of mirrors and lenses.

The image is put inside a glass casing/plate. A CCFL (Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamp) slowly moves across illuminating the image through the glass casing/plate. The light from the CCFL is reflected by an angle mirror to another mirror. Each mirror in the scanner is slightly curved to focus the image through the scanner.

When the image passes through the last mirror, the lens focuses the image through a filter on the CCD array. This operation depends on the type of scanner. Sometimes a certain scanner uses the three pass method. Each time the image is passed through a different colour filter (this uses the RGB colour system (Red Blue or Green)) after that process, the scanner produces three filtered images into one single full coloured image. This process isn’t used much today, as technology has become more advanced and a scanner only has to pass an image once.

Scanners vary in resolution and intensity. Flatbed scanners (flatbed, because it’s completely flat on a surface) usually scan on a 300x300dpi (Dots per Inch). This determines on the scanners sensors in a single row and how many it has. With a scanner that works on a 300x300dpi, the number of sensors that it would work with would be about 2,550 (arranged in horizontal rows).

Next, the scanner must transfer the image to the computer. This is done a method which varies with different scanners. There are 5 ways of doing this process:

. Parallel is the way of connecting the scanner to the computer through the parallel port in the computer. This is the slowest method of the three

. Small Computer System Interface

Tablet

A Tablet is graphical device that allows people to draw an image onto a computer. It’s just like drawing an image from pencil to paper but is done through technology. Usually the tablet is connected via USB interface

It’s a much easier tool for graphical artists who draw computer images with a mouse. It’s become an everyday use for them since it can change an images attributes. Yes, a mouse can do this but it takes time. Unlike a mouse, a Tablet is information generated to modify the brush techniques through the tablet itself.

A tablet is a lot like an interactive whiteboard and other touch screen technology. It works on the same basis as these tools, but you can’t see what you’re drawing on the tablet, you have to look at the computer screen.

The first actual computer tablet was invented in 1888. It was called the Telautograph and was created by Elisha Grey, whose most recognised as the inventor of the telephone to Alexander Graham Bell. It was made for handwriting recognition back in the day, which then went into a computer called the Stylator (created in 1957). Most mice are taken over by tablets, because not just graphical artists, but general people prefer to use them as they find it easier. The first colour tablet software was created in 1981, by musician Todd Rundgren, which he then licensed to Apple. It was called the Utopia Graphics Tablet System.

The first Graphics tablets were used for Apple. Those tablets used a magnetostriction technology which contained wires made of special alloys, stretching over a solid substrate to accurately locate the stylus (Pen) on the surface of the tablet. The first graphics tablet for home use was called the KoalaPad. It was originally designed for Apple in their computer, Apple 2. The Koala eventually broadened its applicability to all home computers, like the Atari 8-bit family and The Commodore 64. Later after this, Atari produced a completing tablet which was considered to use very high quality work.

Graphics tablets are mostly used in the artistic industry. Artists have a pen, a graphics tablet and a graphics editing program, like Adobe Photoshop (which is the most common graphics program). This gives artists the precision to create drawings digitally, which speeds up the task when drawing on paper.

Graphics tablets these days are often used to replace computer mice. It’s becoming more popular to do this as people find it practical, as the tablet is basically the computer screen, and the pen is the pointer of the mouse. Artists do this for practical use, because it would be a waste of time to do their work with the graphics tablet, then move the operations with the mouse, it saves time to just do all operations on one device.

Digital Camera

A digital camera is a device in which a person can take a visual image of anything they want, or they could even video it. They are most used for digital photos though. ‘Digital’ cameras are a lot more sophisticated than film cameras. They can keep the photos on a small memory card which can hold thousands of images (depending on the memory size of the card) and you can see all your images at any time. Most digital cameras in the times we live in now, can record sound as well as video. Most digital cameras run on high amounts of power, meaning it needs a power source which can take it for quite some time. Usually a digital camera runs on batteries, which run out of power in a matter of hours, but some can contain a rechargeable battery. These run out depending on the digital camera, but most last a couple of days (depending on how much you use it).

Apart from just taking images, videos and sound, they have range of special features. Like taking pictures for different environments or even crop the image when you’re not even on a computer. Most people have a digital camera in the 21 st century; not many have film cameras, though people say that film cameras make the picture that is taken clearer and more presentable.

Digital cameras are presented with many different types and settings. Most people choose a digital camera that takes higher resolution or mega-pixels. This makes the image they take much more realistic to the actual thing which was taken.

When digital cameras over took film cameras, many photographers had one question in their minds which they couldn’t just budge. Could film cameras be converted into digital? Well the answers yes and no. The reason for saying no was for people that used 35mm film cameras, which were most photographers. The problem was the cost would be too much. The process involved removing the back of the film camera with a custom built digital unit. Many 35mm cameras at this time could not have this technology for the film cameras, because it was developed for 35mm film. This meant the cameras had to be mounted on a large bulky unit that was often bigger than the actual cameras.

Some 35mm cameras had to have digital backings made from their manufacturer. Typical backs for 35mm cameras cost over $10,000 at the time. These backs lead to enormous image sizes. Some sizes were ridiculous. For example, Phase One’s P45 39MP image backing creates a TIFF image size that takes 224.6MB; some were even bigger in size.

“The resolution of a digital camera is often limited by the image sensor (typically a CCD or CMOS sensor chip) that turns light into discrete signals, replacing the job of film in traditional photography. The sensor is made up of millions of "buckets" that essentially count the number of photons that strike the sensor. This means that the brighter the image at a given point on the sensor, the larger the value that is read for that pixel. Depending on the physical structure of the sensor, a color filter array may be used which requires a demosaicing/interpolation

algorithm. The number of resulting pixels in the image determines its "pixel count". For example, a 640x480 image would have 307,200 pixels, or approximately 307 kilo pixels; a 3872x2592 image would have 10,036,224 pixels, or approximately 10 megapixels” –Wikipedia

Most Digital Cameras contain a video output port, which sends a standard definition signal to a person’s television, allowing them to view the images and videos on their television. This includes the option to view the pictures in a slideshow. Since it was first developed, technology has become greater. High Definition has been created to be put into digital cameras these days, meaning the pictures can be viewed in HD, but the person must have a HDTV and a HDMI cable.

For film cameras to store the images inside the camera, the camera must have contained film, hence “film” cameras. With digital cameras it’s a completely different story. Digital cameras have a tiny computer stored inside them; this is called internal memory, though it’s very limited, usually containing at the most a hundred megabytes. For more memory in a digital camera, the person needs a Micro SD Card or a CompactFlash Card. It’s a tiny storage device that can hold thousands of images and videos, depending on the size of the memory. This is just like any other storage device like a USB flash drive or a Floppy Disk.

Pixel

A pixel is the smallest point in a picture. It usually is represented in a two dimensional picture by dots or squares. Pixels usually are made up of different colours, then put together to form a picture like in the image below.

A pixel is usually formed of colours, but that means it is made up of bits per pixel (bpp). (I.e. a 1 bit image is formed of 1 pixel). A pixel is the smallest part of a digital picture, with millions of different pixels built up to create the image similar to an original. Pixels are used in different places in our everyday life all the time, like our televisions. LCD televisions use

Computers use pixels to display images. The image that is made up of pixels is known as a bitmapped image or a raster image. Computers use pixels to display images.

There are different types of pixels, from sub pixels to

megapixels. Sub pixels basically means when each section of a pixel, for example on a LCD television, have their own addressable element. A Megapixel is one million pixels inside an image. People often hear megapixels when they have a phone or camera. Say an image is 2901 x 1294; the megapixels would be 3.7 megapixels (2901x1294=3,753,894 rounded)

“For color depths of 15 or more bits per pixel, the depth is normally the sum of the bits allocated to each of the red, green, and blue components. High color, usually meaning 16 bpp, normally has five bits for red and blue, and six bits for green, as the human eye is more sensitive to errors in green than in the other two primary colors. For applications involving transparency, the 16 bits may be divided into five bits each of red, green, and blue, with one bit left for transparency. A 24-bit depth allows 8 bits per component. On some systems, 32-bit depth is available: this means that each 24-bit pixel has an extra 8 bits to describe its opacity (for purposes of combining with another image).”-Wikipedia.

Image Resolution

Image resolution is the detail that’s inside an image. The term comes from raster, film and other digital images. Resolution can basically see lines that show in an image while still being visibly clear.

Resolution is the number of pixels inside a digital image, if there are more pixels inside the image, the more clearer and sharper it looks. Like in the image below, the top image contains fewer pixels, so the resolution isn’t as good. But the bottom image contains more pixels, so it contains a fresher and crisper picture.

But it’s much more complicated than that. The counting of pixels isn’t a real measurement for resolution on digital images.

Intensity

The intensity of a pixel is represented by various different colours. In a colour image system, the image is presented through three or four colour intensities; red, blue and green, or cyan, magenta, black, yellow. Like in the image below, the colours that go into creating an image for our televisions or computers.

The pixel intensity is the intensity of each individual pixel, from its brightness to its tone. It varies from 0-255 which gives it its different types of colour tone, “e.g., in an RGB image there are three sets of intensities shown - those of the red channel, green channel, and blue channel”

In the image of the Photoshop to the side, it shows the how the intensity works through the colours. The RGB is the colours red, green and blue. They mix to form a colour of your choice, just like CMYK. (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black) this is the intensity of the colours, because it lets you choice the different tones and shades of a specific colour.

Vector ImagesA Vector image is represented in video game graphics when it contains sharp, curved and neat corners when zoomed in. Vector images are stored in mathematical equations, rather than raster images, which creates images with bitmaps, also known as ‘pixels’.

Some say vector graphics are the best kind of image editing, because it creates a clearer picture when zooming in on an image, like in the image at the side. Compared to bitmap (Raster), the image is much smoother. All the earliest two dimensional computer graphics used

vector graphics. A lot of popular arcade games used vector graphics too, like ‘Asteroids’ and ‘Space Wars’. But in this day and age,

Vector graphics is usually used in virtually all three dimensional rendering and multimedia texting.

But not all vector graphics are appropriate in producing graphics work in devices like scanners and cameras because they mainly focus using Raster

graphics instead. This makes it hard to convert the image to a Vector, because it will focus on pixels rather than mathematical formulas.

Raster images

A Raster image or as its better known as, bitmap, is a data collection where it shows pixels usually in a rectangular grid and is used generally in video game graphics.

A bitmap corresponds directly with the image on the screen and with the same format used for storage in the display’s video format.

In Raster graphics, it is characterized by the width and height of an image by the pixels and the number of bits per pixel (bpp). There are a lot of raster based editors around, like ‘Photoshop’, ‘Painter’ and ‘Microsoft Paint’.

When an image is used with Raster based programs, the image contains millions of pixels. Most Raster based programs work by manipulating each individual pixel, they also work RGB colour model, instead of the CYMK colour model. Raster images deal with more practical images compared to Vector images, like photographs and photo realistic images.

Optimising

Optimising a file is quite a hard process to be put into words. It’s very similar to compression, where somebody compresses (makes the file smaller) a file to make it run faster on the internet. To optimise a file for the internet, the file must be shrunk down to be able to run as fast as possible. This makes the page more accessible for users to go onto, because if it took a long time to run, people wouldn’t bother. Optimizing an image is meant for the web, but like compressing, it does take some of the image away, but still trying to make it as perfect as the original.

Image Bit Depth

Image bit depth is the number of bits that are stored inside an image. The bit of an image is the computers way of storing colours in numbers called binary code. The numbers are stored in 0’s and 1’s. When an image is just black and white, the bit depth of the image is 1. The reason for this is the two numbers in the bit depth is zero and one. These two numbers represent two colours, black and white. But as an image begins to add more bits, more colours are added to the image. Say an image contains 8 bits; the amount of colours would be 256. This means the image will have more shades and colours. This because when more bits are added to the image, the amount of colours doubles, like shown in the key below.

Key:

1 bits = 2 colours (Black and White)

2 bits = 4 colours

3 bits = 8 colours

4 bits = 16 colours

5 bits = 32 colours

6 bits = 64 colours

7 bits = 128 colours

8 bits = 256 colours

9 bits = 512 colours

10 bits = 1024 colours

Optimising Image Resolution

Image resolution is the number of pixels and dots that make up the image. Each pixel or dot is a single colour. An image is uses dpi (dots per inch); this means between each inch of an image, there are a certain amount of dots that create the image. For example, if an image has the size of 8 inches by 4 inches and the dots per inch are 150. And another image is 12 inches by 6 inches but the dots per inch are 75. The first image of 8x4 would be clearer because it has more dots in each inch of the image. But when someone shrinks the resolution of an image, the image can be optimised. With this, if someone wants to view the image at the same resolution, it will become pixelated when it fits the screen.

Optimising Image Dimensions

The dimensions of an image are the size and width of an image, which is usually measured in pixels, dpi, inches or centimetres. If an image has higher dimensions, the image will have a higher resolution, but this also depends on the dpi. When optimising the image for such things like a website, you need to consider the dimensions of the image. Putting it onto a website, the person would have to make the image dimensions much smaller so the site would run, but this depends on the dimensions of the image. If an image is 2000x1500 and the computer screen is 1000x750, the image would have to be optimised because it would not fit. You could just zoom into the image but then it would lose some of its detail due the dpi.

Target Image Output

With outputting an image, there are usually 3 modes of outputting it onto certain things. The three usual programs that people use are through websites, e-mail and printing, but outputting an image is mainly for the uses of putting a website together. When outputting an image onto a website, it’s usually to capture a user’s view. The image usual just enhances the website, to make it look better. But with adding an image, it’s usually has to have a size of 320x240 or less. This is not just to fit the website; it’s also to make the site run faster.

Compression

Compression is very similar to optimising, in the way in shrinks down files in the need to gain. It’s a little different though. Compression is used in programs that edit images like Photoshop. Like the image below, it’s been compressed using the Lossy method, which has

made it lose 50% of its quality. The two usual methods are Lossy and Lossless. With Photoshop, it makes changes to the image every time you compress it. Like in the image, I only compressed it once and it’s lost so

much quality. But it did make the image size considerably less from compressing as the original.