Raster graphics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The smiley face in the top left corner is a raster image. When enlarged, individual
pixels appear as squares. Zooming in further, they can be analyzed, with their
colors constructed by adding the values for red, green and blue.
In computer graphics, a raster graphics image is a dot matrix data structure
representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels, or points of color, viewable via a
monitor, paper, or other display medium. Raster images are stored in image files
with varying formats.[1][self-published source?]

A bitmap, a single-bit raster,[2] corresponds bit-for-bit with an image displayed on a

screen, generally in the same format used for storage in the display's video
memory, or maybe as a device-independent bitmap. A raster is technically
characterized by the width and height of the image in pixels and by the number of
bits per pixel (a color depth, which determines the number of colors it can
represent).[3]

The printing and prepress industries know raster graphics as contones (from
"continuous tones"). The opposite to contones is "line work", usually implemented
as vector graphics in digital systems.[4]

Contents [hide]
1 Etymology
2 Applications
2.1 Computer displays
2.2 Image storage
3 Resolution
4 Raster-based image editors
5 See also
6 References
7 External links
Etymology[edit]
The word "raster" has its origins in the latin rastrum (a rake), which is derived from
radere (to scrape). It originates from the raster scan of cathode ray tube (CRT) video

monitors, which paint the image line by line by magnetically steering a focused
electron beam.[5] By association, it came also to refer to a rectangular grid of
pixels. The word rastrum is now used to refer to a device for drawing musical staff
lines.