Digital Images

A digital image is a numeric representation (normally binary) of a

two-dimensional image. Depending on whether the image resolution
is fixed, it may be of vector or raster type. By itself, the term "digital
image" usually refers to raster images or bitmapped images.
Any image from a scanner, or from a digital camera, or in a
computer, is a digital image. Computer images have been "digitized",
a process which converts the real world color picture to instead be
numeric computer data consisting of rows and columns of millions of
color samples measured from the original image.
Digital images are electronic snapshots taken of a scene or scanned
from documents, such as photographs, manuscripts, printed texts,
and artwork. The digital image is sampled and mapped as a grid of
dots or picture elements (pixels). Each pixel is assigned a tonal value
(black, white, shades of gray or color), which is represented in binary
code (zeros and ones). The binary digits ("bits") for each pixel are
stored in a sequence by a computer and often reduced to a
mathematical representation (compressed). The bits are then
interpreted and read by the computer to produce an analog version
for display or printing.
Digital images are made of picture elements called pixels. Typically,
pixels are organized in an ordered rectangular array. The size of an
image is determined by the dimensions of this pixel array. The image
width is the number of columns, and the image height is the number
of rows in the array. Thus the pixel array is a matrix of M columns x N
rows. To refer to a specific pixel within the image matrix, we define
its coordinate at x and y. The coordinate system of image matrices
defines x as increasing from left to right and y as increasing from top
to bottom. Compared to normal mathematic convention, the origin is
in the top left corner and the y coordinate is flipped. Why is the
coordinate system flipped vertically? Originally, digital images were
defined in terms of the electron beam scanning pattern of televisions.
The beam scanned from left to right and top to bottom. Other than
this historical reason, there is no purpose served by this inversion of
the y coordinate.
JPG, GIF, TIFF, PNG, BMP. What are they, and how do you choose?
These and many other file types are used to encode digital images.
The choices are simpler than you might think.
Part of the reason for the plethora of file types is the need for
compression. Image files can be quite large, and larger file types

mean more disk usage and slower downloads. Compression is a term

used to describe ways of cutting the size of the file. Compression
schemes can by lossy or lossless.
Another reason for the many file types is that images differ in the
number of colors they contain. If an image has few colors, a file type
can be designed to exploit this as a way of reducing file size.
Repere bibliografice (n sistemul de citare Harvard)

Wikipedia 2014,
Digital image, Wikipedia The Free
Encyclopedia,
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27
November
2014,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_image
Fulton, Wayne 2008, What is a digital image anyway?, A few
scanning
tips,
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November
2014,
http://www.scantips.com/basics1b.html
Cornell University Library 2002, Digital Imaging Tutorial, Cornell
University
Library,
viewed
on
27
November
2014,
https://www.library.cornell.edu/preservation/tutorial/intro/intro01.html
Sheets, Kristopher 2013, 1. What is a digital image?, Learn
ImageJ,
viewed
27
November
2014,
https://sites.google.com/site/learnimagej/imageprocessing/what-is-a-digital-image
Matthews, Rick 2010, Digital Image File Types Explained, Wake
Forest
University,
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on
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November
2014,
http://users.wfu.edu/matthews/misc/graphics/formats/formats.h
tml