CS110 Chapter Notes - Chapter 6: Color Depth, Bmp File Format, Raster Graphics
Document Summary
This section discusses about bitmap image file and how to decode a bitmap file. Bitmap file, which is extensively used in microsoft windows application, is the simplest raster image type since most of the bitmap file variants do not involve data compression. It is usually required to generate conveniently editable large image file, and is more suitable when dealing with photos. However, it could not be efficiently transferred through internet and its image may seem blocky (i. e. pixelation occurs) when scaled up. In general, a bitmap file consists of 4 components, as discussed as follows (every element is placed in. File header: header field (2-byte):string i. e. "bm, file size (4-byte): size of file in bytes, reserved (2-byte): data reserved for application, reserved (2-byte): data reserved for application, offset (4-byte): offset in bytes to where pixel data is available. Important color (4-byte): number of important color (could be 0 if all colors are equally important)