How Does Digital Images - Computerphile Work?

A digital image is like a picture made up of tiny colored squares that fit together to make something you can see clearly.

Imagine you have a coloring book, each square in the coloring book is like a pixel, which stands for "picture element." When you color inside those lines, you're giving each pixel its own color. A digital image works the same way, but instead of crayons, it uses numbers to tell the computer what color each tiny square should be.

A computer doesn’t understand colors like we do, it uses numbers. Each pixel can have a number that tells it how much red, green, and blue it has in it. These are called RGB values, short for Red, Green, and Blue. For example, if a pixel is bright red, its RGB value might be (255, 0, 0), meaning full red, no green, and no blue.

When you look at a digital image on a screen, the computer is showing you all those tiny colored squares, pixels, working together. Just like how your coloring book comes to life when you color in each square, a computer can make any picture by using the right number of pixels and the right colors for each one.