Web Aniamtion

Web Animation

This article will be exploring the web animation and how it came to be.

Animation on a web page is any form of movement of objects or images. Animations are usually done in Adobe Flash, although Java and GIF animations are also used in many websites. Streaming video in Flash is coming increasingly popular.

Reasons to have motion on a web page are to draw attention to something, to provide a demonstration or to entertain. The need for movement on a page depends on the purpose and content of the page. A financial institute would not really need animations on their pages, while an entertainment site obviously would have such movement.


Web animation is used through;

· Banner ads Banner adds are advertisements that are placed on web pages. When clicked on by the web user, the banner add it takes the user to a web site to give the user more information about the product advertised.The advertisement is constructed from an image, GIF, Flash, often employing animation, sound, or video to maximize presence.

· Promotion - Promotional advertising is when companies ect. create an animation to promote their product.

· Information - Animations can be created for the web to give information to internet users.

· Entertainment - Animations for entertainment can be found on the internet. These can be found on video streaming websites like YouTube.

But how did aniamtion start? When was it invented and how did it get to this sort of web animation? And most importantly, what is animation?
In this section of the article, it will be exploring this.

Animation is an illusion that is created by quickly cycling through a series of images, each slightly different from the last. The brain perceives the group of images as a single changing scene. In film, this illusion is created by using cameras that record many photographs, or frames, each second. When the frames are played back by a projector, the audience sees a moving picture.We see animations due to what is called “Persistance of vision”. "Persistence of Vision" refers to the phenomenon where the retina retains an image for a brief split-second after the image was actually seen, and lends itself to animation by fostering the illusion of motion when we view images in closely-timed sequence to one another. We don't notice the fractional skips between images because that persistence fills in the momentary gap to make the motion seem seamless. So persistence of vision is a optical illusion, so we don’t notice the skip and instead see it as if it’s actually happening.

Animation has come a long way since its start in 1824, when Peter Roget presented his paper 'The persistence of vision with regard to moving objects' to the British Royal Society.
And today animation is used almost everywhere.

Animation began with devices. Some of these devices were;

1831

Belgian scientist Dr. Joseph Antoine Plateau and Dr. Simon Rittrer constructed a machine called a phenakistoscope.

1868
The first flip book appeared in September, 1868, when it was patented by John Barnes Linnett under the name kineograph, or moving picture. They were the first form of animation to employ a linear sequence of images rather than circular as in the older phenakistoscop.

1889

Thomas Edison announced his creation of the kinetoscope which projected a 50ft length of film in approximately 13 seconds.

But then came the creation of the projector;

1892

Emile Renynaud, combining his earlier invention of the praxinoscope with a projector, opens the Theatre Optique in the Musee Grevin. It displays an animation of images painted on long strips of celluloid.

  

1895

Louis and Augustine Lumiere issued a patent for a device called a cinematograph capable of projecting moving pictures.

1896

Thomas Armat designed the vitascope which projected the films of Thomas Edison. This machine had a major influence on all sub-sequent projectors.

Then animators stared to use cameras to capture animations that they would draw. This is known as stop motion animation, and is still widely used today. Then animators stared to use cameras to capture animations that they would draw.
This is known as stop motion animation, and is still widely used today.
Stop-motion animation is used to describe animation created by physically manipulating real-world objects and photographing them one frame of film at a time to create the illusion of movement. There are many different types of stop-motion animation, usually named after the medium used to create the animation. Computer software is widely available to create this type of animation.  Traditionally a movie film camera was started and stopped, one frame at a time.  
While the camera was stopped an animator would adjust the figure or object the camera was pointing at. The camera would film another frame - this would continue until all the animation was filmed.

1906

J. Stuart Blackton made the first animated film which he called "Humorous phases of funny faces." His method was to draw comical faces on a blackboard and film them. He would stop the film, erase one face to draw another, and then film the newly drawn face.

1908

In France Emile Cohl produced a film, Phantasmagorie which was the first depicting white figures on a black background.

One of the many examples of stop motion animation is Claymation. 

1908

Clay-animated films were produced in the United States as early as 1908, when Edison Manufacturing released a trick film entitled The Sculptor's Welsh Rarebit Dream.Each animated piece, either character or background, is "deformable"—made of a malleable substance, usually plasticine, clay.

1910

Emile Cohl makes En Route the first paper cutout animation. This technique saves time by not having to redraw each new cell, only reposition the paper.

Animations became more advanced, and now animators used a series of drawn pictures to produce an animation;

1911   

Winsor McCay produced an animation sequence using his comic strip character "Little Nemo."

1914   

Winsor McCay produced a cartoon called "Gertie, The Trained Dinosaur" which amazingly consisted of 10,000 drawings.

Then came the creation of cell animation;

1914

Earl Hurd applies for a patent for the technique of drawing the animated portion of an animation on a clear celluloid sheet and later photographing it with its matching background. This is known as Cel animation.

The cel is an important innovation to traditional animation, as it allows some parts of each frame to be repeated from frame to frame, thus saving labor. A simple example would be a scene with two characters on screen, one of which is talking and the other standing silently. Since the latter character is not moving, it can be displayed in this scene using only one drawing, on one cel, while multiple drawings on multiple cels will be used to animate the speaking character.

1915

J.R. Bray devised "Colonel Heeza Liar". It was the first cartoon series to feature a recurring animated star.

 1917

The International Feature Syndicate released many titles including "Silk Hat Harry","Bringing Up Father", and "Krazy Kat".

1919

Pat Sullivan created an American cartoon "Felix the Cat."

1923

Walt and Roy Disney found Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio.

1923

Walt Disney extended Max Fleischer's technique of combining live action with cartoon characters in the film "Alice's Wonderland".

 1927

Warner Brothers released "The Jazz Singer" which introduced combined sound and images.

1928

Walt Disney created the first cartoon with synchronized sound called "Steam Boat Willy".

1930

The King of Jazz is produced by Universal. In it is a short animated sequence done by Walter Lantz. It is the first animation done with the two strip technicolor process.

1934

Urb Irwek creates a multi-plane camera. This camera is capable of filming several separate layers of cels giving the final frame a truly three dimensional look.

1943

John and James Whitney produced "Five Abstract Film Exercises." These films are visually based on modernist composition theory, the carefully varied permutations of form are manipulated with cut-out masks so that the image photographed is pure direct light shaped, rather than the light reflected from drawings as in traditional animation.

1945

Harry Smith produced animation by drawing directly onto film.

1957

John Whitney used 17 Bodine motors, 8 Selsyns, 9 different gear units and 5 ball integrators to create analog computer graphics.

Computer generated animations.

Computer animation is the process of using a computer graphics to generate animated images. Computer animation

Computer animation first developed in 1964 by Ken Knowlton. He started developing computer techniques for producing animated movies, but it wasn't until 1972, in the University of Utah, Fred Parke created the first computer generated facial animation.

We see animations due to what is called “Persistance of vision”. "Persistence of Vision" refers to the phenomenon where the retina retains an image for a brief split-second after the image was actually seen, and lends itself to animation by fostering the illusion of motion when we view images in closely-timed sequence to one another. We don't notice the fractional skips between images because that persistence fills in the momentary gap to make the motion seem seamless.
So persistence of vision is a optical illusion, so we don’t notice the skip and instead see it as if it’s actually happening.

In digital animation there are different file formats, raster and vector.
Raster and vector animations work the same as raster and vector images.
Raster images, also known as Bit map images are a way to represent digital images. A raster image represents an image in a series of bits of information which translate into pixels on the screen. These pixels form points of colour which create an overall finished image.

When a raster image is created, the image on the screen is converted into pixels. Each pixel assigned a specific value which determines its colour.

This is the same with animation, because the the frame by frame images are made up of pixels which make up the full image.

The raster image takes a wide variety of formats, such as;

Bmp – a BMP image, also known as a bitmap image file, is a raster graphics image file format that is used to store digital images. BMP images use no compression.

JPEG - A JPEG, or Joint Photographic Experts Group, is commonly used for storing digital photos since the format supports up to 24-bit colour. 

The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable trade-off between storage size and image quality. JPEG has a lossy compression, which means it can compress files so that they are smaller, but the files loose some colour and information.JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality.

PNG - The PNG, or Portable Network Graphics, file format supports true colour which is 16 million colours. The PNG file excels when the image has large, uniformly coloured areas. The lossless PNG format is best suited for editing pictures. Indexed-colour, grayscale, and true colour images are supported, plus an optional alpha channel. PNG is designed to work well in online viewing applications like web browsers so it is fully stream able with a progressive display option. It is robust, meaning it provides both full file integrity checking and simple detection of common transmission errors.

GIF – GIF, or Graphics Interchange Format, is limited to an 8-bit palette, or 256 colours. This makes the GIF format suitable for storing graphics with relatively few colours such as simple diagrams, shapes, logos and cartoon style images. The GIF format supports animation and is still widely used to provide image animation effects. It also uses a lossless compression that is more effective when large areas have a single colour, and ineffective for detailed images or dithered images

TIFF - The TIFF, or Tagged Image File Format, is a flexible format that normally saves 8 bits or 16 bits per colour for 24-bit and 48-bit totals, usually using either the TIFF or TIF filename extension. TIFF's flexibility can be both an advantage and disadvantage, since a reader that reads every type of TIFF file does not exist. It can be lossy and lossless as some offer relatively good lossless compression for bi-level, black and white, images.

As with raster animations, vector animations work the same as vector images.
Vector graphics is based on images made up of vectors which lead through locations called control points. Each of these points has a definite position on the x and y axes of the work plan. Each point is a variety of database, including the location of the point in the work space and the direction of the vector. Each track can be assigned a colour, a shape, a thickness and also a fill. This does not affect the size of the files in a substantial way because all information resides in the structure.
Vector images can be resized to any size, and the image will still remain clear, unlike raster images where the image would become pixelated if it’s resized big enough.
Vector images can have fake cartoon look. This is due to the fact that they are unable to depict the continuous subtle tones of a photograph.


But what are the different softwere that animation use?
There are many different software for digital animation. Some examples of these sofwear are; 

QuickTime 

QuickTime is built into the Macintosh operating system and is used by most Mac applications that include video or animation. PC’s can also run files in QuickTime format but they require a special QuickTime driver. QuickTime supports most encoding formats including Cinepac, JPEG, and MPEG. QuickTime is competing with a number of other standards including AVI and ActiveMovie.

In Feb 1998, the ISO standards body decided to use QuickTIme as the basis for the new MPEG-4 standard. MPEG (.mpg, .mpeg, .mpe) Short for Moving Picture Experts Group, and pronounced m-peg, a working group of ISO. The term also refers to the family of digital video compression standards and file formats developed by the group. MPEG generally produces better-quality video than competing formats, such as Video for Windows, Indeo and QuickTime. MPEG files can be decoded by special hardware or by software. 

MPEG achieves high compression rate by storing only the changes from one frame to another, instead of each entire frame. The video information is then encoded using a technique called DCT.

MPEG uses a type of lossy compression, since some data is removed. But the diminishment of data is generally imperceptible to the human eye. 

There are three major MPEG standards: MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4. 

The most common implementations of the MPEG-1 standard provide a video resolution of 352-by-240 at 30 frames per second (fps). This produces video quality slightly below the quality of conventional VCR videos. 

MPEG-2 offers resolutions of 720x480 and 1280x720 at 60 fps, with full CD-quality audio. This is sufficient for all the major TV standards, including NTSC, and even HDTV. 

MPEG-2 is used by DVD-ROMs. MPEG-2 can compress a 2 hour video into a few gigabytes. While decompressing an MPEG-2 data stream requires only modest computing power, encoding video in MPEG-2 format requires significantly more processing power. 

MPEG-4 is a graphics and video compression algorithm standard that is based on MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 and Apple QuickTime technology. Wavelet-based MPEG-4 files are smaller than JPEG or QuickTime files, so they are designed to transmit video and images over a narrower bandwidth and can mix video with text, graphics and 2-D and 3-D animation layers. MPEG-4 was standardized in October 1998 in the ISO/IEC document 14496. Video for Windows (.avi)A format developed by Microsoft Corporation for storing video and audio information. Files in this format have an .AVI extension.  AVI files are limited to 320 x 240 resolution, and 30 frames per second, neither of which is adequate for full-screen, full-motion video. However, Video for Windows does not require any special hardware, making it the lowest common denominator for multimedia applications. Many multimedia producers use this format because it allows them to sell their products to the largest base of users. 

Video for Windows supports several data compression techniques, including RLE, Indeo, and Cinepak. A competing software -only video format is QuickTime.



Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash) is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast. More recently, it has been positioned as a tool for "Rich Internet Applications" ("RIAs").

Flash manipulates vector and raster graphics to provide animation of text, drawings, and still images. It supports bidirectional streaming of audio and video, and it can capture user input via mouse, keyboard, microphone, and camera. Flash contains an object-oriented languagecalled ActionScript and supports automation via the JavaScript Flash language (JSFL).

Flash content may be displayed on various computer systems and devices, using Adobe Flash Player, which is available free of charge for common web browsers, some mobile phones, and a few other electronic devices (using Flash Lite).

Some users feel that Flash enriches their web experience, while others find the extensive use of Flash animation, particularly in advertising, intrusive and annoying, giving rise to a cottage industry that specializes in blocking Flash content. Flash has also been criticized for adversely affecting the usability of web pages.

 

So as you can see, animation has come a long way in order for web animation to be created. 

Video in Interactive Media Article

This article will be exploring the different Video in Interactive media. 

But firstly, we have to outline just what interactive media is. 

So what is Interactive media I hear you cry! 

Basically, interactive media is a type of commutation programme that rely's on you, the User.  

Interactive media is becoming more and more popular, accessible and more applications are becoming available that use video for interactive media. 

Look how sophisticated it is

Cinema and TV are no longer the only places where moving images can be found. Now, due to the world becoming more modern everyday, moving images can be found in everything from mobile devices to cash machines. And the popular demand to be able to watch film and television on the move and online, and as the number of broadband users continues to grow, it means that technology companies and television broadcasters are making them more accessible to the public.

Mobile phones carry increasingly sophisticated technology for shooting, sharing and playing moving images. Portable music players show television content and people can watch movies on their portable games consoles. 

Remember these?? Me neither.

DVD has replaced VHS video as the ubiquitous format for watching movies at home so every popular format is now digital. 

Ohhh Shiny

In short, video in interactive media is everywhere. 

The implication for interactive media producers is that their work is converging with that of traditional film and video producers, but with an added requirement to implement this through current digital media technologies. This presents some new challenges for learners, including the technological requirements of this proliferation of platforms. 

Interactive media normally refers to products and services on digital computer-based systems which respond to the user’s actions by presenting content such as text, graphics, animation, video, audio, etc. 
Interactive advertising uses online or offline interactive media to communicate with consumers and to promote products, brands, services, and public service announcements, corporate or political groups.

YouTube is an example of a website that uses interactive advertisement. They show advertisements before their videos and also in various places on their website. If the user clicks on these advertisements, they automatically take the user to a website giving more information about the film.

YouTube also often shows film trailers, which is another application of video being used in interactive media, before popular YouTube videos. Like with advertisements, if these film trailers are clicked on, they automatically take the user to a website giving more information about the film.

Interactive media is used every day, by almost everyone. It is used in many different platforms. 

It is used on the web through streaming platforms such as YouTube and Spotify and also through e-mail. But interactive media is used in many other ways; 

This woman is oblivious to identity theft clearly.

• Interactive television is an example of these platforms, as are supermarket self checkouts and cash machines. 

• It is also used in things like CDs and DVDs where the viewer has options of what they want to play/listen to/watch. 

• Mobile phones, iPods, games consoles ect are all devices that use interactive media for things such as watching videos. 

I'm not getting paid by apple

• And even things like presentations projected from a computer screen use video for interactive media.

• Another example is games. This is because video games and controlled by you, the user.

Video and interactive media is all made up of images. These images are all compressed. 
Compression means to make a file smaller, but also minimising the quality being lost. 
Image compression can be either lossy or lossless.

When files are compressed with lossy compression, they tend to look blurred. This is because when a file is converted into a different file type so it can be compressed and made smaller, the compression causes it to loose bits information. 

Lossy - Bit rubbish            Lossless - Damn good

Lossless compression means basically the opposite of Lossy. The file reconstructed from the compressed file, so that it doesn't lose bits of information, like it would if it was lossy compressed.

But what are these video file formats I hear you scream unenthusiastically?!

Well I'll tell you. 

Here are different types of file formats, shock horror you have to learn more than one! Some of these include;

AVI

AVI, meaning Audio Video Interleave, is a multimedia file format created by Microsoft in 1992.

Introduced as a part of Microsoft’s Video Windows Technology, AVI files contain both a video and audio file container.

This allows it to synchronise audio and video playback.

There are different types of video file formats. Some of the more frequently used are; 

3GP

3GP is a multimedia file container format is used for mobile phones. It uses lossy compression so that the file can be small enough to be sent. 

SWF

SWF is an Adobe Flash file format.

It is used for Multimedia, currently the domain format for vector graphics in the Internet, and for Action Script.

SWF files contain can contain animation and applet files.  

MPEG-4

MPEG-4 is most commonly used to store digital video streams, especially those defined by MPEG, but can also be used to store other files such as still images.

Like most modern file formats it allows streaming through the internet.

MPEG-4 only has one official file extension name, MP.4. 

But player are these video files viewed on?

Well, there are many different Media Players. Some of the more popular and commonly used ones include; 

• QuickTime 

QuickTime is a Multimedia player created by Apple. It has the capability to play various formats of digital video, and is able to hold different compression methods and file types. QuickTime can also compress and stream video. 

• Windows Media Player 

Windows Media player was created by Microsoft as a multimedia player and also a media library application. 

• VLC 

VLC is a free Media player and video streaming player. 

It a cross platform player, and is able to support audio, video, compression methods and different file formats. 

 

Viral Marketing and YouTube

Viral Marketing basically means something that is spread around. Think of it as a flesh eating virus, that's slowly infecting and killing of humanity one by one. First someone discovered it, then they infected their friends, and they infected their friends. Eventully everyone gets infected, and everyone dies. 

Hence the name Viral Marketing. 

But there are less deaths in Viral Marketing. 

But anyway, I bet you want to know just exactly how viral marketing works? 

Well, Viral Marketing is an idea that spreads, and while it spreads, it helps businesses grow. This means the marketing is the product.

Still confused?

Well, this means that the more people use the product/service, the more people see them.

The Product/Service has to improve more when people use them more.

Oh yes, second picture of the YouTube logo.

Some examples of services that use this kind of Viral Marketing are Hotmail and YouTube.

This kind of marketing relies solely on its users to pass on the company message to other users.

For example, in the case of YouTube, they rely on the users to make and share videos on their site, in order to increase their popularity. 

To conclude, 

Interactive Media is something that rely's on Users. Whether its a Video Game, a Cash Machine or YouTube, they all need users to work and function

Digital Graphics Article

This article will be exploring digital graphics.

Firstly this article is going to discuss pixels. Pixels, or picture elements, are dots that are used to display an image on a screen. Monitors display pictures by dividing the display screen into thousands or millions of pixels, arranged in rows and columns. The pixels are so close together that they appear connected.

These monitors have a bit rate, which controls how many greys or colours each pixel is capable of displaying.

For example;
A 1-bit system can only manage black and white because each memory bit can only be either positive or negative.

An 8-bit display each of the pixels can display 256 colours;

And with 24-bit each of the pixels can display sixteen-million colours;

24-bit colour is known as True Colour, because it displays every pixel colour exactly. A true-color image file records the full range of colors precisely.
True color allows more hues than the eye can distinguish, so most operating systems offer the option of 16-bit high color (Thousands of Colors on Macintosh). In high color, the monitor actually displays only 32 distinct levels of red, 32 of blue, and 64 of green. The visual difference is almost unnoticeable, but reducing the color depth to 16 bits per pixel boosts video performance. And running your computer system in high color won't affect your image data; most applications, such as Photoshop or a Web browser, still use the full 24-bit values. The data gets rounded off only when displayed on the monitor. That's why there are no high-color image file formats.

While pixels are the smallest complete element of an image, they are comprised of even smaller elements. Bit depth is the control of colour on the screen. The computers operating system must dedicate a small amount of memory to each pixel.
For example, in an RGB monitor each pixel has three dots within it: a red, blue, and green dot.
In theory these dots all converge at the same point, making them visibly seamless, but sometimes the image can appear fuzzy.
The measure of total pixels in an image is referred to as its resolution, and the higher the resolution in a small area, the more difficult it is to distinguish between individual pixels.

All images have resolution. Resolution means the pixel count in digital imaging.
An image of N pixels high by M pixels wide can have any resolution less than N lines per picture height, or N TV lines.
When the pixel counts are referred to as resolution, the convention is to describe the pixel resolution with the set of two positive integer numbers, where the first number is the number of pixel columns and the second is the number of pixel rows, for example. Another popular convention is to cite resolution as the total number of pixels in the image, typically given as number of megapixels, which can be calculated by multiplying pixel columns by pixel rows and dividing by one million.

Other conventions include describing pixels per length unit or pixels per area unit, such as pixels per inch or per square inch. None of these pixel resolutions are true resolutions, but they are widely referred to as such; they serve as upper bounds on image resolution.
The number of effective pixels that an image sensor or digital camera has is the count of elementary pixel sensors that contribute to the final image, as opposed to the number of total pixels, which includes unused or light-shielded pixels around the edges.

The count of pixels isn't a real measure of the resolution of digital camera images, because colour image sensors are typically set up to alternate colour filter types over the light sensitive individual pixel sensors. Digital images ultimately require a red, green, and blue value for each pixel to be displayed or printed, but one individual pixel in the image sensor will only supply one of those three pieces of information. The image has to be interpolated to produce all three colours for each output pixel.

But only a certain kind of images are made up of pixels. These images are called Raster images. 

Raster images, also known as Bit map images are a way to represent digital images. A raster image represents an image in a series of bits of information which translate into pixels on the screen. These pixels form points of colour which create an overall finished image.
When a raster image is created, the image on the screen is converted into pixels. Each pixel assigned a specific value which determines its colour.

The raster image takes a wide variety of formats, such as;

Bmp – a BMP image, also known as a bitmap image file, is a raster graphics image file format that is used to store digital images. BMP images use no compression.

JPEG - A JPEG, or Joint Photographic Experts Group, is commonly used for storing digital photos since the format supports up to 24-bit colour.

The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable trade-off between storage size and image quality. JPEG has a lossy compression, which means it can compress files so that they are smaller, but the files loose some colour and information.JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality.

PNG - The PNG, or Portable Network Graphics, file format supports true colour which is 16 million colours. The PNG file excels when the image has large, uniformly coloured areas. The lossless PNG format is best suited for editing pictures. Indexed-colour, grayscale, and true colour images are supported, plus an optional alpha channel. PNG is designed to work well in online viewing applications like web browsers so it is fully stream able with a progressive display option. It is robust, meaning it provides both full file integrity checking and simple detection of common transmission errors.

GIF – GIF, or Graphics Interchange Format, is limited to an 8-bit palette, or 256 colours. This makes the GIF format suitable for storing graphics with relatively few colours such as simple diagrams, shapes, logos and cartoon style images. The GIF format supports animation and is still widely used to provide image animation effects. It also uses a lossless compression that is more effective when large areas have a single colour, and ineffective for detailed images or dithered images



TIFF - The TIFF, or Tagged Image File Format, is a flexible format that normally saves 8 bits or 16 bits per colour for 24-bit and 48-bit totals, usually using either the TIFF or TIF filename extension. TIFF's flexibility can be both an advantage and disadvantage, since a reader that reads every type of TIFF file does not exist. It can be lossy and lossless as some offer relatively good lossless compression for bi-level, black and white, images. 

All these images have either lossy, lossless, both or no compression. But what is lossy and lossless compression?

Image compression can be either lossy or lossless.

Lossy methods are especially suitable for natural images such as photographs in applications where minor loss of fidelity is acceptable to achieve a substantial reduction in bit rate.When files are compressed with lossy compression, they tend to look blurred. This is because when, for example, a file is converted into a JPEG file so it can be compressed and made smaller, the compression causes it to loose colour and information.

Lossless compression means that the picture can be reconstructed from the compressed file, so that it doesn’t lose colour or information from the picture, like it would if it was lossy compressed. Lossless compression is preferred for archival purposes and often for medical imaging, technical drawings, clip art, or comics, because the picture looks more clear and professional.

Here is an image example showing the comparison between Lossy and Lossless;

But if only Raster Images have pixels, what is the other type of image that doesn't use pixels?
These non-pixel images are called Vector Images.

Vector graphics is based on images made up of vectors which lead through locations called control points. Each of these points has a definite position on the x and y axes of the work plan. Each point is a variety of database, including the location of the point in the work space and the direction of the vector. Each track can be assigned a colour, a shape, a thickness and also a fill. This does not affect the size of the files in a substantial way because all information resides in the structure.

Vector images can be resized to any size, and the image will still remain clear, unlike raster images where the image would become pixelated if it’s resized big enough.

Vector images can have fake cartoon look. This is due to the fact that they are unable to depict the continuous subtle tones of a photograph.

The difference between vector and raster graphics is that raster graphics are composed of pixels, while vector graphics are composed of paths.

A raster image, such as a gif or jpeg, is an array of pixels of various colours, which together form an image. A vector graphic, such as an .eps file or Adobe Illustrator file, is composed of paths, or lines, that are either straight or curved.The data file for a vector image contains the points where the paths start and end, how much the paths curve, and the colours that either border or fill the paths.

Because vector graphics are not made of pixels, the images can be scaled to be very large without losing quality.
Raster graphics, on the other hand, become "blocky," since each pixel increases in size as the image is made larger. This is why logos and other designs are typically created in vector format -- the quality will look the same on a business card as it will on a billboard.

Here is a picture example showing the difference between a Vector and Raster, or Bitmap, image:

Greyscale






In photography and computing, a greyscale digital image is an image in which the value of each pixel is a single sample, that is, it carries only intensity information. Images of this sort, also known as black-and-white, are composed exclusively of shades of grey, varying from black at the weakest intensity to white at the strongest.
Grayscale images are distinct from one-bit bi-tonal black-and-white images, which in the context of computer imaging are images with only the two colours, black, and white

Grayscale images are also called monochromatic, denoting the presence of only one, mono, colour, chrome.
Grayscale images are often the result of measuring the intensity of light at each pixel in a single band of the electromagnetic spectrum (e.g. Infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, etc.), and in such cases they are monochromatic proper when only a given frequency is captured.

RGB

The RGB colour model is an additive colour model in which red, green and blue light is added together in various ways to reproduce a broad array of colours.
The name RGB comes from the initials of the three additive primary colours, red, green, and blue.
The main purpose of the RGB colour model is for the sensing, representation, and display of images in electronic systems, such as televisions and computers, though it has also been used in conventional photography
Before the electronic age, the RGB colour model already had a solid theory behind it, based in human perception of colours.


RGB is a device-dependent colour model: different devices detect or reproduce a given RGB value differently, since the colour elements (such as phosphors or dyes) and their response to the individual R, G, and B levels vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, or even in the same device over time. Thus an RGB value does not define the same colour across devices without some kind of colour management.


Typical RGB input devices are colour TV and video cameras, image scanners and digital cameras.

YUV - Luminance and Chrominance

YUV is a colour space typically used as part of a colour image pipeline. It encodes a colour image or video taking human perception into account, allowing reduced bandwidth for chrominance components, thereby typically enabling transmission errors or compression artefacts to be more efficiently masked by the human perception than using a "direct" RGB-representation.

Image Capture

Image Capture refers to the capturing of images through different devices. These devices include;

- Digital Cameras 

- Scanners

Devices such as digital cameras focus light onto a semiconductor to create a digital image.

This basically means, in the case of digital cameras, that they directly sample the original light that bounces off your subject, immediately breaking that light pattern down into a series of pixel values. Within all cameras there are a series of lenses that break down the light to create an image, but Digital Cameras focus the light on to a Semiconductor device that records it electronically, rather than a tape like with non digital cameras. 




Optimising

Optimising means changing both the visual and file size of an image in order for it to be used in other programmes.

For example, an image taken from the internet and intended to be put into a powerpoint may be too big to actually fit into Powerpoint.