What Are Pixels and Megapixels?
A pixel is a tiny block of color and is a digital image’s most basic building block. A digital image — be it a photograph or another type of graphic — is composed of thousands or millions of individual pixels. The more pixels an image contains, the greater its detail. One million pixels equal one megapixel; therefore, a 3.1-megapixel digital camera can take photographs that contain more than 3 million pixels. Most graphics-editing applications list an image’s resolution using pixel dimensions, with the horizontal measurement coming first. For instance, an image with dimensions listed at “2592×1944” would contain 2,592 horizontal pixels and 1,944 vertical pixels. Multiplying these two numbers gives you 5,038,848 pixels, or approximately 5 megapixels of resolution.
