What is a Pixel?

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What is a Pixel?
Pixels are small units or dots used in the display of images on a computer screen. One image is composed of thousands or millions of pixels, which are like tiny squares with a specific color on them. Pixel sizes depend on image resolution. The higher the picture resolution, the greater is the number of pixels on it.

The word “pixel” is a combination of “picture” and “element”. Commonly they are used as reference to units of digital images. Pixels are connected to each other by rows and columns. The more of them are present in one part of an image, the less chance of seeing them as “square units”. Pictures with high resolution look so smooth that one wouldn’t know that the image is made up of millions of square units with different colors. One will get to appreciate the pixel squares that make up an image by zooming it in to more than 100%.

Pixels themselves are composed of even tinier units representing specific colors. In RGB computer monitors, each pixel has one red, one green, and one blue component. The more of these red, blue, and green units are present, the higher the image quality or resolution.

Various digital cameras are marketed with their capability to provide good resolution pictures. This picture resolution is expressed in terms of the number of pixels. A particular brand may boast of a 12 megapixel camera. This simply means that images produced from this particular camera contain about 12 million pixels. Images with resolution as high as this are so vivid and clear. Details of the picture will be so sharp with the colors matching those seen by the naked eye. So if one wants to have better quality photos, he/she should choose cameras with high megapixel values.

The display in computer monitors may also be adjusted in terms of pixel resolution. Higher resolutions will mean that colors are brighter and picture details will be smoother. Lower resolutions meanwhile will result to basic picture quality.

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