Image Storage and File Formats
Data is of two types: One which human understand such as text and numbers while
the other form is diffused data which only machine understand.
File format defines exactly how the image data is stored
The image transmitted across any network may be accessed in a different
environment of operating systems, processors and programming environments. This
may cause interpretation mistakes.
To maintain the interoperability, standard image file formats are necessary.
Image Metadata: Refers to all non-intensity data and is stored in the image header.
Compression in file format: Most file formats provide image compression
Types of File Formats
GIF (Graphics Interchange Format): Lossless compression(LZW algorithm). Quality
of image very high. GIF support bit images and hence 256 colours. Good in
displaying flat color area (line art and colour graphics). GIF supports animation i.e it
can store multiple images and using time information creates the illusion of motion.
JPEG (Joint Photgraphic Expert Group): used for storing continuous tone images. Has
facility for both lossless and lossy compression. Mainly used format for photographic
images over world wide web.
PNG (Portable network Graphics): Specially designed for the web. It does not support
animation but has built-in text capabilities for image indexing allowing storage of text
within the file itself.
A digital image is composed of M rows and N columns of pixels each storing a value
Pixel values are most often grey levels in the range 0-255(black-white)
Spatial Resolution
Spatial resolution simply refers to the smallest discernible detail in an image
The spatial resolution of an image is determined by how sampling was carried out.
The gray level resolution is the smallest discernible change in gray level. There is flexibility
in choosing the number of samples used to generate a digital image, gray levels are usually an
integer power of 2
An MxN of L level image has a spatial resolution of MxN pixels and gray level
resolution of L levels.
Reducing spatial resolution (reducing MxN) checkerboard pattern appears on the
image
Reducing number of gray levels (reducing L) very fine ridge like structure appears in
areas of smooth gray levels
Intensity Level Resolution
Intensity level resolution (Gray level) refers to the number of intensity levels used to
represent the image
The more intensity levels used, the finer the level of detail discernable in an
image
Intensity level resolution is usually given in terms of the number of bits used
to store each intensity level
No of Number of Intensity
Examples
Bits Levels
1 2 0,1
2 4 00,01,10,11
4 16 0000,1010,1111
8 256 00000000,10100111
16 65536 1010101010101010
256 grey levels (8 bits per pixel) 128 grey levels (7 bpp)
64 grey levels (6 bpp) 32 grey levels (5 bpp)
16 grey levels (4 bpp) 8 grey levels (3 bpp)
4 grey levels (2 bpp) 2 grey levels (5 bpp)
