what does bitmap mean?

Answer 1

In terms of graphics, that means the actual PIXELs that make it up. When you enlarge a picture, the bits get larger, so that each former pixel becomes many. When it is big enough, you see distortions, that they call bitmaps.

To avoid this, always go to the original graphic, and resize it to the new size that you need. JPG files also re-compress each time, and begin to distort.

Answer 2

list o' numbers!

A bitmap is SEEN on screen as a mosaic of little square cells, known as picture cells, also called PIXELS for short. You've got so many pixels across and so many pixels down. All you have to do to store that information is start with the dimensions (width x height) then list out the colours in each cell, row by row.

take a simple black-and-white bitmap (256 shades of grey, from black=0 to white=255). Deep down, the file is going to consist of numbers like this

8 8
255 255 255 0 0 255 255 255
255 255 255 0 0 255 255 255
255 255 255 0 0 255 255 255
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
255 255 255 0 0 255 255 255
255 255 255 0 0 255 255 255
255 255 255 0 0 255 255 255

That would give you a white square with a black cross on it, eight pixels wide by eight pixels high.

To encode colours, you just have more numbers for each cell (say a Red, a Green and a Blue, numbered from 0 to 255 each).

I don't know the details of the format but they're all just variations on that. Some types of bitmap (like jpg) do clever things like compress the data to save space.

Answer 3

A Bitmap is a data file or structure representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels, or points of color, on a computer monitor, paper, or other display device.

Answer 4

In plain English:
A bitmap is a format in which electronic images can be stored. It was one of the original formats but there are better ones out there that store information more efficiently.

For the technical jargon:
http://searchsmb.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid44_gci211672,00.html

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/b/bit_map.html

Answer 5

What these other clever folk said. I always compress TIFF and BMP into high quality JPGs. I've managed large websites and the managers who made me store the archival copies as TIFFs have never need use them since a well produced JPEG will do in all but the most demanding printing / display situations.

Answer 6

bitmap is a type of picute made in " MS paint " and occupying larger space (MBs) than Jpegs (KBs)
Its quality is better than jpg and its file extention is .bmp

Answer 7

bitmap: a picture made from many, many dots.

Answer 8

Put simply, it is a computer-viewable picture. It's a picture or design made up of pixels (dots of colour) . It is usually created in Paint on a PC

Answer 9

It's a picture format (.bmp) just like .jpg