How Pixels Work

A look at how images are displayed on a computer Before creating digital art, it’s important to understand how your computer displays images.

This lesson covers the following material:  Primary Colors… of a Computer  What is a Pixel  The Big Picture The Primary Colors… of a Computer

In school you were probably taught that the primary colors were Red, Yellow, and Blue and that with those colors you can make any other color.

Computers are very similar, but they have a different set of primary colors. Computers use Red, Green, and Blue (a.k.a. RGB). The Primary Colors… How RGB Works As you combine the colors Red, Green, and Blue, you start to get other colors. – Full RGB = white – No RGB = Black – Full Red + Full Green = Yellow – Adding a little blue to that yellow will change it to be closer to white. – Lessoning the green from the yellow will make it be more and more orange/red.

What is a pixel

Rather than mixing colors like you typically would with paint, computer rely on placing those three colors (RGB) into very small, tightly compact spaces to make it appear that they are mixed into a single color.

This tiny, compact space is called a pixel.

What is a pixel – A zoomed look The image below shows a program that creates colors based off of the RGB color model.

It can be difficult to see, at first, how colors like Red+blue (and black, representing an absence of green) can be placed closely enough to represent that magenta color. What is a pixel – the shrunken effect Notice how every time you shrink the “pixels” they blend more and more into each other, appearing to be magenta. Another example: The Big Picture

Multiple pixels can be bunched together into a tiny space to represent an image.

You can see the individual pixels in this image. The Big Picture

You can see here how the pixels are visible when zoomed in, but when zoomed out they blend pretty well. The summary

1. Computers use combinations of Red, Green, and Blue to create any color. 2. RGB colors are combined into compact spaces to create pixels 3. Pixels are combined into compact spaces to create images Image Sources

• RGB image by Ntozis at Greek Wikipedia • Pixel transition images from the PixelChanger program, created by Judson Birkel. • Ninja Turtle image created by Judson Birkel