Bitmap - wikipedia Bitmap For other uses, see Bitmap ( disambiguation ). In computing, a bitmap is a mapping from some domain ( for example, a range of integers ) to bits ( values which are zeros and ones ). It is also called a bit array or bitmap index. Bitmap image downsampled from an Inkscape vectorial image In computer graphics, when the domain is a rectangle ( indexed by two coordinates ) a bitmap gives a way to store a binary image, that is, an image in which each pixel is either black or white ( or any two colors ). The more general term pixmap refers to a map of pixels, where each one may store more than two colors, thus using more than one bit per pixel. Often bitmap is used for this as well. In some contexts, the term bitmap implies one bit per pixel, while pixmap is used for images with multiple bits per pixel. A bitmap is a type of memory organization or image file format used to store digital images. The term bitmap comes from the computer programming terminology, meaning just a map of bits, a spatially mapped array of bits. Now, along with pixmap, it commonly refers to the similar concept of a spatially mapped array of pixels. Raster images in general may be referred to as bitmaps or pixmaps, whether synthetic or photographic, in files or memory. Many graphical user interfaces use bitmaps in their built - in graphics subsystems ; for example, the Microsoft Windows and OS / 2 platforms ' GDI subsystem, where the specific format used is the Windows and OS / 2 bitmap file format, usually named with the file extension of. BMP ( or. DIB for device - independent bitmap ). Besides BMP, other file formats that store literal bitmaps include InterLeaved Bitmap ( ILBM ), Portable Bitmap ( PBM ), X Bitmap ( XBM ), and Wireless Application Protocol Bitmap ( WBMP ). Similarly, most other image file formats, such as JPEG, TIFF, PNG, and GIF, also store bitmap images ( as opposed to vector graphics ), but they are not usually referred to as bitmaps, since they use compressed formats internally. Contents 1 Pixel storage 2 Device - independent bitmaps and BMP file format 2.1 Other bitmap file formats 3 See also 4 References Pixel storage In typical uncompressed bitmaps, image pixels are generally stored with a variable number of bits per pixel which identify its color, the color depth. Pixels of 8 bits and fewer can represent either grayscale or indexed color. An alpha channel ( for transparency ) may be stored in a separate bitmap, where it is similar to a grayscale bitmap, or in a fourth channel that, for example, converts 24 - bit images to 32 bits per pixel. The bits representing the bitmap pixels may be packed or unpacked ( spaced out to byte or word boundaries ), depending on the format or device requirements. Depending on the color depth, a pixel in the picture will occupy at least n / 8 bytes, where n is the bit depth. For an uncompressed, packed within rows, bitmap, such as is stored in Microsoft DIB or BMP file format, or in uncompressed TIFF format, a lower bound on storage size for a n - bit - per - pixel ( 2 colors ) bitmap, in bytes, can be calculated as : size = width height n / 8, where height and width are given in pixels. In the formula above, header size and color palette size, if any, are not included. Due to effects of row padding to align each row start to a storage unit boundary such as a word, additional bytes may be needed. Device - independent bitmaps and BMP file format Main article : BMP file format Microsoft has defined a particular representation of color bitmaps of different color depths, as an aid to exchanging bitmaps between devices and applications with a variety of internal representations. They called these device - independent bitmaps or DIBs, and the file format for them is called DIB file format or BMP file format. According to Microsoft support : A device - independent bitmap ( DIB ) is a format used to define device - independent bitmaps in various color resolutions. The main purpose of DIBs is to allow bitmaps to be moved from one device to another ( hence, the device - independent part of the name ). A DIB is an external format, in contrast to a device - dependent bitmap, which appears in the system as a bitmap object ( created by an application... ). A DIB is normally transported in metafiles ( usually using the StretchDIBits ( ) function ), BMP files, and the Clipboard ( CF_DIB data format ). Here, `` device independent '' refers to the format, or storage arrangement, and should not be confused with device - independent color. Other bitmap file formats Main article : Image file formats The X Window System uses a similar XBM format for black - and - white images, and XPM ( pixelmap ) for color images. Numerous other uncompressed bitmap file formats are in use, though most not widely. For most purposes standardized compressed bitmap files such as GIF, PNG, TIFF, and JPEG are used ; lossless compression in particular provides the same information as a bitmap in a smaller file size. TIFF and JPEG have various options. JPEG is usually lossy compression. TIFF is usually either uncompressed, or lossless Lempel - Ziv - Welch compressed like GIF. PNG uses deflate lossless compression, another Lempel - Ziv variant. There are also a variety of `` raw '' image files, which store raw bitmaps with no other information ; such raw files are just bitmaps in files, often with no header or size information ( they are distinct from photographic raw image formats, which store raw unprocessed sensor data in a structured container such as TIFF format along with extensive image metadata ). See also Computer graphics portal Raster graphics Raster scan Rasterization Tilemap Voxels Vector graphics References Jump up ^ James D. Foley ( 1995 ). Computer Graphics : Principles and Practice. Addison - Wesley Professional. p. 13. ISBN 0 - 201 - 84840 - 6. The term bitmap, strictly speaking, applies only to 1 - bit - per - pixel bilevel systems ; for multiple - bit - per - pixel systems, we use the more general term pixmap ( short for pixel map ). Jump up ^ V.K. Pachghare ( 2005 ). Comprehensive Computer Graphics : Including C++. Laxmi Publications. p. 93. ISBN 81 - 7008 - 185 - 8. Jump up ^ Julian Smart ; Stefan Csomor & Kevin Hock ( 2006 ). Cross-Platform GUI Programming with Wxwidgets. Prentice Hall. ISBN 0 - 13 - 147381 - 6. Jump up ^ `` DIBs and Their Uses ''. Microsoft Help and Support. 2005 - 02 - 11. Jump up ^ `` List of bitmap file types ''. Search File-Extensions.org. Jump up ^ J. Thomas ; A. Jones ( 2006 ). Communicating Science Effectively : a practical handbook for integrating visual elements. IWA Publishing. ISBN 1 - 84339 - 125 - 2. Multimedia compression and container formats Video compression ISO / IEC MJPEG Motion JPEG 2000 MPEG - 1 MPEG - 2 Part 2 MPEG - 4 Part 2 / ASP Part 10 / AVC MPEG - H Part 2 / HEVC ITU - T H. 120 H. 261 H. 262 H. 263 H. 264 H. 265 SMPTE VC - 1 VC - 2 VC - 3 VC - 5 Alliance for Open Media AV1 Others Apple Video AVS Bink Cinepak Daala Dirac DV DVI FFV1 Huffyuv Indeo Lagarith Microsoft Video 1 MSU Lossless OMS Video Pixlet ProRes 422 ProRes 4444 QuickTime Animation Graphics RealVideo RTVideo SheerVideo Smacker Sorenson Video, Spark Theora Thor VP3 VP6 VP7 VP8 VP9 WMV XEB YULS Audio compression ISO / IEC MPEG - 1 Layer III ( MP3 ) MPEG - 1 Layer II Multichannel MPEG - 1 Layer I AAC HE - AAC AAC - LD MPEG Surround MPEG - 4 ALS MPEG - 4 SLS MPEG - 4 DST MPEG - 4 HVXC MPEG - 4 CELP MPEG - D USAC MPEG - H 3D Audio ITU - T G. 711 ( A-law, μ - law ) G. 718 G. 719 G. 722 G. 722.1 G. 722.2 G. 723 G. 723.1 G. 726 G. 728 G. 729 G. 729.1 IETF Opus iLBC 3GPP AMR AMR - WB AMR - WB+ EVRC EVRC - B EVS GSM - HR GSM - FR GSM - EFR Others ACELP AC - 3 AC - 4 ALAC Asao ATRAC CELT Codec2 DRA DTS FLAC iSAC Monkey 's Audio TTA True Audio MT9 Musepack OptimFROG OSQ QCELP RCELP RealAudio RTAudio SD2 SHN SILK Siren SMV Speex SVOPC TwinVQ VMR - WB Vorbis VSELP WavPack WMA MQA aptX Image compression IEC, ISO, ITU - T, W3C, IETF CCITT Group 4 GIF HEIF HEVC JBIG JBIG2 JPEG JPEG 2000 JPEG XR Lossless JPEG PNG TIFF TIFF / EP TIFF / IT Others APNG BPG DjVu EXR FLIF ICER MNG PGF QTVR WBMP WebP Containers ISO / IEC MPEG - ES MPEG - PES MPEG - PS MPEG - TS ISO base media file format MPEG - 4 Part 14 ( MP4 ) Motion JPEG 2000 MPEG - 21 Part 9 MPEG media transport ITU - T H. 222.0 T. 802 IETF RTP Others 3GP and 3G2 AMV ASF AIFF AVI AU BPG Bink Smacker BMP DivX Media Format EVO Flash Video GXF IFF M2TS Matroska WebM MXF Ogg QuickTime File Format RatDVD RealMedia RIFF WAV MOD and TOD VOB, IFO and BUP Collaborations NETVC MPEG - LA See Compression methods for methods and Compression software for codecs Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bitmap&oldid=808760138 '' Categories : Bit data structures Graphics file formats Talk Contents About Wikipedia Català Dansk Español Français 한국어 हिन्दी Italiano Norsk Polski Română Svenska Tiếng Việt Edit links This page was last edited on 4 November 2017, at 23 : 58. 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Question: what small points make up a bitmap image
Answer: pixels