A picture element, more commonly known as a pixel, is the building blocks of all thing digital. Pixels are tiny individual boxes made of single colors. When these boxes are combined, they create an image. The more pixels within an image, the more refined and realistic that image will appear.
Each pixel is assigned both a location and color value. Almost all colors can be broken down into a combination of red, green, and blue. However, A GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) is a specific file format for an image which utilizes binary digits of 0s and 1s to represent each color. All the colors of the rainbow are assigned a specific number value which lets the pixel know what color to display. This means that when you are looking at a GIF, you are really seeing the colorful representation of 1s and 0s.
As we learned in lecture, bit depth is the concepts that helps create digitals images using pixels. Firstly, a bit or binary digit represents the values of 1s and 0s. Bit depth, in the words of Al Cutting, is the number of bits behind each pixels. When creating different types of images in different formats, there are will be a different amount of bits behind each pixel. For example, GIFs have a maximum of 8 bits behind each pixel limiting these images to only 256 colors. JPEGs there can be up to 24 bits behind each pixel, allowing for more 16 million colors. The more bits behind each pixel, the more colors that can be used for that image. However, more bits also increases the size of the file, so it is important to keep that in mind when creating images.
Just to recap, pixels are the puzzle pieces which make up all digital imagery. Without them, all computers would be blank screens. Pixels carry a code of 0s and 1s called bits, which represent a variety of colors to control how an image is perceived. The number of bits inside each pixel is referred to as the bit depth and determines how many colors we can have. All in all, these concepts work together to make up the digital world.