What is a Bitmap image?
A bitmap image is either scanned or created in an image-editing program like Photoshop. If someone gives a designer a photo file, it’s a bitmap image. A bitmap image can’t be used to create a flag because the small little pixels, which fool the eye into seeing one continuous tone when enlarged, will become large pixel squares that look blotchy. A bitmap will usually be adequate to determine the cost and best method for creating a flag, but not for production purposes. If a vector image is not available one can be created from a bitmap image, but art fees will be assigned based on an hourly rate. To create a vector image from a bitmap, the entire design will have to be manually recreated in a vector drawing program and the time may vary based on the complexity of the design. You can contact us at info@usflags.
A bitmap is one of many types of file formats for images stored in a computerized form. It carries the extension .BMP. Computers use bits of 1 and 0 to store data. A bitmap is literally a map of bits that form a particular picture when rendered to a display like a computer monitor. To understand how a bitmap image displays, it’s important to understand the computer display screen. The display is made up of rows and columns of tiny blocks, or pixels. In a bitmap image, each pixel is assigned at least one bit to indicate whether the pixel should reflect the background color, the foreground color, or some other color. In the case of a page of black and white text, let’s consider a single letter. The many pixels that make up that letter only require one bit of data each. Either the pixel will be black or white: 1 or 0. When a bitmap displays a colored image, such as a lake scene, there are several shades of gradation in colors and lighting. In this case, each pixel in the bitmap might have
Bitmap images, also called raster or paint images, are made of individual dots, called pixels (picture elements), that are arranged and colored differently to form a pattern. When you zoom in, you can see the individual squares that make up the total image. Bitmaps have a fixed resolution so a bitmap looks best when you display or print it at its original size. Increasing the size of a bitmap has the effect of increasing individual pixels, making lines and shapes appear jagged. Reducing the size of a bitmap distorts the original image, because pixels are removed to reduce the overall image size. The color and shape of a bitmap image appear continuous when viewed from a greater distance. Because each pixel is colored individually, you can create photorealistic effects, such as shadowing and intensifying color. However, because a bitmap image is created as a collection of arranged pixels, its parts cannot be manipulated (e.g., moved) individually. Up-to-date, graphics-capable Web browser
A bitmap image is probably the simplest image to work with. Unlike the JPEG and GIF images which require decompression, bitmaps are just what they sound like: a list of all of the pixel colors for the image. Even a novice programmer can open, modify, and write bitmap images in most computer languages, and there is no wasted CPU time for decompression. Therefore, you’re probably wondering “if bitmaps are so easy, why doesn’t everybody use them on the web?” Well, it turns out that bitmaps are also very large. In many cases, a GIF image that will take up 50K will take up close to a megabyte as a bitmap. Just imagine how long it would take to download your favorite web page if the images were so large! So, bitmaps are usually not used on the web. Their primary use is for icons and desktop wallpaper because of the ease of use.
